10th Letter from Crimea

B"H

Tammuz 18, 5758
July 12, 1998

To my dear friends,

I want to begin by telling you about an amazing personal incident that happened to me not long ago. As you may know, after Pesach I went to America to receive medical attention. The previous time I had been in America, in February, I had suddenly and unexplicably become very weak -- so weak, that sometimes if I walked even a very short distance, I had to stop to renew my strength. Returning to Simferopol, I had to face cleaning for Pesach and helping to organize the six public sedarim, which I could not have done without the household help that I had B"H, due to my weakened state. (Usually if I'm a little weak, I pop a few vitamin pills, and I'm fine, but this time, that simple solution did not work.) Next, in the middle of a class, I suddenly had extreme chest pain, which lasted 15 minutes, and this repeated itself while I was saying the morning blessings at home on the first day of Pesach. Finally, several hours before the "last days" of Pesach, I felt my heart racing, took my pulse, and found it to be 140! A doctor friend of ours in the states told Itchie to give me half a cup of wine, and get me into bed, which is where I stayed for the remainder of the holiday, and the next week.

My pulse lowered to 120, then 100, which was still way over my usual 60, and I was suffering frequent chest pain. By then I was hardly able to walk -- I was shuffling like an old lady. This all seemed very strange to me, since till then I had been in pretty good condition. I had all of our mezuzos checked, and they were fine. One had to be moved to the other side of the door, since at the time we had put it up, that had been the front door of our house; however since we had built a corridor connecting the house and the old office in February, it was no longer the main entrance, and the mezuzah should have been moved to the other side. However, this still did not correct my problems.

Since we don't put too much faith in local medical facilities, I had to travel to America together with Itchie to seek treatment. B"H my cousin, who is a very good doctor, connected with an excellent hospital, was able to see me the day after I arrived. After checking me and performing a number of tests, he said that he felt that I was in quite good health, but because of my fast pulse, he suggested that I see a top cardiologist. B"H we had connections to a Bikur Cholim, (a Jewish medical referal organization that also helps to obtain medical attention for those who don't have insurance,) that we used to work with years ago, when we lived in Alabama. They made the arrangements for us, and (since we have no medical insurance in the States,) they took care of the fees for the doctors and most of the tests. Well, I had a check-up with a big Fifth Avenue cardiologist, he did more tests, and he also found me to be in great shape, except for the fast heartbeat!

Considering all of the symptoms, and the fact that I am not prone to hypochondria, I felt that this was very strange. I was quite nervous about the prospect of returning to the Crimea, and then having an emergency, Heaven forbid, and not having anywhere to turn to for medical help. I thought "Rebbe, I want to return to Simferopol to continue your shlichus, so please give me some kind of a sign as to what the problem is!" That was on a Thursday. The same evening we went to visit our oldest daughter Elkie and her family. They had just bought a new house, which I had already seen, so originally, only Itchie was supposed to go to look at it. However, since we were planning on being in Montreal for Shabbos, and were short on time, instead of driving back and forth, I also went with them. The house was now in the middle of renovations. In the dining room, where there had been a mural and lovely wall treatments, they had ripped open one wall, and two old windows were now exposed. I asked Elkie why they would do such a thing, and she told me the following. Her contractor had told her about the "ethical will" of Rabbi Yehudah HaChossid, in which it states that windows and doors should never be entirely sealed up, since it could be harmful. If sheidim* had come in through them, they needed to be able to go out through them also. (Sheidim is usually translated as "demons." They are phenomena that can't be experienced with the five senses, yet they interface with the material world. It's pointed out in the Talmud that sheidim are around us all the time.) A friend of my daughter's who was standing there told me "It's true -- I have a young niece who was always falling and hurting herself badly. Her family discovered a plastered-over window in their home. As soon as it was opened, she stopped hurting herself. The opening remaining only has to be as big as a nail hole." Itchie said, yes, he remembered having heard about this before. Well, I did some quick thinking, and realized that I started having my symptoms at exactly the same time that we built the new office. It had been a basically unused garage. It was so poorly constructed that you could put your hand through the paper that was part of the walls. The kids were afraid to go in it, because they insisted they saw weird animals running around there, but I never saw anything. When the builders took down two of the walls to rebuild them, I had suggested removing the garage door, and building a new wall there also. However they told me that if I did that, my taxes would go up -- since it would now become a living area -- but if I left the door as it was, and just built a new wall on the inside, sealing up the door, it would be fine. So that is what we did! That Shabbos we spent in Montreal, at the home of our second daughter Bashie and her family. Friday morning, shortly after we arrived, I told her the strange story. Her husband Yossie is a locksmith. "Mommy," Bashie said, "Yossie is frequently called by people who are doing renovations. When they want to close up a window or door, they always ask him to install a peephole there, so it won't be entirely closed up!" Friday morning I tried contacting our office in Simferopol with the strange request that they quickly drill a hole in the wall. However, they said that (due to the time difference) it was almost Shabbos, and the earliest they could get the proper drill would be on Monday. Well, Monday our driver in Simferopol was finally able to drill the hole in the wall in our hole-in-the-wall. Tuesday I started feeling better, and by Wednesday all of the symptoms had disappeared, and I was back to my old self! Baruch Hashem, all's well that ends well, and this episode did.

* * * * * * *
I ended up missing Lag B'Omer altogether, as I flew back to the Crimea then, and it was lost in the difference between time zones. But Sholom Ber, who had stayed with the younger children while I was in New York, and Moishie, one of our Pesach bochurim, (who stayed in Crimea from before Purim till just before Shavuous,) made a nice bonfire, picnic, and program for the teenagers.

Just before Shavuous, and in preparation for the holiday, we had one of those minor miracles that (very) occasionally happen here. It is always a problem of where we will get dairy products for the holiday of the giving of the Torah, when most people eat blintzes topped with sour cream. In a country where almost nothing kosher is available, we discovered a small supply of kosher, cholov Yisroel, chocolate covered ice cream bars from Vienna! And what a price -- 35 kopeks each -- under 18 cents! The only way we can account for these unusually low prices - (last year Snapple was available for a short time at the same price, and once at Purim we got Israeli candies that usually cost 85 cents for 8 cents; good Vered chocolate was selling for 40 cents a bar, and Shoprite products can be bought in Kiev and even occasionally here) -- is that they are sent here as humanitarian aid. Whomever these items are sent to sells them instead of distributing them, and makes a tidy "profit." Anyway, it was very timely for us, and we were able to advertise that the "Ten Commandments" would be read in shul followed by an ice cream party for everyone, just as we had done in America, thus we had a very nice turnout for the holiday.

The most exciting news, of course, is that we are in the process of buying a building for a shul. It would still take us years to get back any existing old buildings that belonged to the Jewish community. The large Choral Synagogue in the center of town was burned down during the communist regime, and stores stand there now. The other buildings are mainly very small shteiblach. They and even the former yeshiva (now a "Physical Culture Institute") are located in "not the greatest" neighborhood. The yeshiva and another Jewish school building are now owned by the mafia, which makes getting them back a problem. The one "synagogue" (state radio station) that still stands, we have an extremely tenuouuus claim to, since it was a Karaite synagogue. So we looked for something close to the center of the town, where it would be convenient for most people.

We found a building on the corner of Archivniy Spusk and Na'birizhnaya (Archives Lane and The Embankment.) It is a corner building facing our picturesque little willow-lined river, near the "Center" (downtown.) It has a great foundation, and walls, and a nice sized yard, but needs a ton of reconstruction and remodelling to make it usable. We hope to include in the building a soup kitchen, library, classrooms, and mikvah as well as the sanctuary. Of course, the major obstacle* is money, because once we have that, we can proceed full speed ahead. We hope that we can depend on you, our good friends in the states, to help us overcome this one minor hurdle! It was interesting, Eli, the boys camp's head counsellor, who was also here for Pesach, recently wrote a report to the Rebbe about his activities here. Included in the answer from the Rebbe was "since it is obvious that the new shul will not be ready for use by Rosh Hashana, you should rent a building nearby, since it is known that the place where people daven for the holidays is where they tend to daven the remainder of the year." (The place that we are currently renting is very near the new site.) All of our time now is being spent on preparing for camp. Boruch Hashem we have great counsellors coming in from New York, England, and Israel. We felt that it was worth the extra expense to bring in "foreigners" to run the boys' camp as well as the girls' camp this year, so that the program would be run according to the same high standard. They have all been working really hard to prepare for a great summer, and we truly appreciate their efforts.
I guess that that's about it for now! I hope you all have a wonderful summer. Be well!

Sincerely,

Leah and Co.

*[We would later have much bigger hurdles to surmount.]