"I have a childhood friend from Bat Yam whose cousin from the Jaffa area got into trouble; he was cashing checks and got entangled with a gang of Arabs. They intended to take his life, and he understood it was only a matter of time before they would find him and put an end to it. He fled to Johannesburg and there became a partner of Eli Asraf, whom everyone knows. The rabbi was living with him there; he is one of the wealthy people in Johannesburg, and he was his partner."

This is how the amazing story begins of a wealthy Jew with assets who was forced to flee from underworld figures to South Africa, yet even there his troubles did not cease. A special meeting with our teacher, the honorable Rav Eliezer Berland shlit"a, saves him from death and brings him to complete teshuvah. Here is the continuation of the story.

"One day he came to Rav Berland with a very large sum to give to the rabbi as charity. The rabbi took the money and pushed it away with both hands, saying to him: I don't want your money, I want your neshamah (soul). He took the money back."

"A few days passed, just to preface how the houses look there in Johannesburg, it is a Jewish neighborhood surrounded by security so that all the robbers who want to reach the homes of the rich Jews cannot enter this neighborhood. And even if someone manages to infiltrate, there are no tall buildings there, except for the hotels. There are villas surrounded by electric fences, so if the robbers touch them, they get electrocuted on the spot. Inside the house, it is built like cages within cages."

"I was at Asraf's house, which means if you managed to penetrate the yard, you cannot enter the house. You broke into the kitchen, you cannot enter directly into the house; you need to break through another door that leads you to a corridor. You broke through another one..., really bars..., everything is always closed because of the thieves there."

"And they also have guards outside the house with weapons, and also inside the yard they are constantly threatened there. I remember being in his living room, there is not a drop of air in the living room, like a cube, everything surrounded by cameras, with a giant screen showing what is happening with all of it, he has no window to look outside."

"This Jew who gave the rabbi the money and the rabbi did not take it from him, after a few days when he arrived home, the usual order is that he arrives with his car, the guards outside see him, open the parking for him, cars do not park outside, everything is inside the yard. When he arrived, he already saw a police car waiting outside, the officers approached him and told him they wanted to talk to him inside the house."

"He went inside with two officers, there they asked him to open the safe, saying: we want to see, you are evading taxes, all sorts of things. He felt something was wrong and did not want to open it. They pulled out their weapons and aimed at the children, put a gun to his head."

"His wife started screaming when she saw the weapon on one of the children - and the children are small. He was not willing to open it, he had millions of dollars there, besides the collateral given to him, he was lending there to non-Jews and they deposited diamonds as collateral. It was much higher than the millions in cash he had there..., it was very difficult for him to open, but the screams of his wife and all the chaos that was, he simply gave in and opened."

"They took everything in bags and told him he was accompanying them to the police station, there maybe they would return it to him. They took him in a police jeep, inside sat another 2 officers..., they drove through a forest for at least 25 minutes. In the depths of the forest, they took him out and threw him, it took him an hour to two to reach the road and there to hitchhike. He arrived at the police station and felt something was wrong, he wanted the money back."

"Through the cameras in his house, they saw the officers, it turned out they were not officers, but 4 thieves known to the police who had already managed to cross the border."

"The miracle here is that he is the only one who can testify against them. Even his wife did not know it was a gang of thieves, they thought they were officers, they were in police uniforms, a police jeep. They could have also shot him twice and killed him, it was in the middle of a forest and no one would have heard them. Or, if they had some delay, and he is the only one who can identify them and testify, they would have killed him, proceeding slowly with patience, a mishap occurs."

"Instead, they threw him, and until he got out of the forest, it would take an hour or two, they could have a mishap at the border and could be caught."

"The great miracle is what Rav Berland told him, I don't want your money, but your neshamah, it was, Baruch Hashem, a wondrous miracle with Rav Berland."

"The rabbi says a word, it is all precise, Baruch Hashem since then, after the chaos that happened, he returned to the land and found out that those who sought his life are already in heaven - he returned to the land a religious man, Baruch Hashem, observing Torah and mitzvot, Baruch Hashem, another one of the miracles that the rabbi performs."

Courtesy of the Tzaddik Line 02-532-6502