A Meeting with Rav Berland shlit"a Saves a Jew from Death and Brings Him to

"I have a childhood friend from Bat Yam whose cousin from the Jaffa area got into trouble. He was check-cashing and got tangled up with a gang of Arabs. They sought to take his life; he understood it was only a matter of time—no matter how much he fled, one day they would find him and put an end to it. He fled to Johannesburg, where he was a partner of Eli Asraf—everyone knows him; Rav Berland would stay with him there. He is one of the wealthy men in Johannesburg, and he was his partner."

Thus begins the amazing story of a wealthy Jewish man with many assets who was forced to flee from the underworld all the way to South Africa, yet even there, his suffering did not cease. A special meeting with our teacher, the holy tzaddik Rav Eliezer Berland shlit"a, saves him from death and brings him to complete teshuvah (repentance). This is the continuation of the story.

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

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

"I was at Asraf's house; this means that if you managed to penetrate the courtyard, you could not enter the house. You broke into the kitchen, but you still couldn't enter directly into the house—you had to break through another door that leads you to a hallway. You broke through another one... literally a grate... everything is always locked because of the thieves there."

"And they also have guards outside the house with weapons, and even inside the house in the courtyard, they are constantly under threat. I remember when I was in his living room, there isn't a drop of air in the living room; it's like a cube, everything is surrounded by cameras, with a huge screen showing what is happening with all of it. He has no window to look outside."

"This Jew who gave the money to the Rav, and the Rav did not take it—a few days after he arrived at his home, in his usual routine, he arrived in his car. The guards outside saw him, opened the gate for him; cars are not parked outside, everything is inside the house in the courtyard. When he arrived, he already saw a police car waiting outside. The policemen approached him and told him they wanted to talk to him inside the house."

"He went inside with two policemen, where they asked him to open the safe. They said: 'We want to see, you are evading taxes, all sorts of things.' He felt that something was wrong and did not want to open it. They pulled out their weapons and aimed them at the children; they put a gun to his head."

"His wife started screaming when she saw the weapon on one of the children—and the children were small. He was not willing to open it; he had millions of dollars there, in addition to collateral that had been given to him. He would lend money to non-Jews there, and they would deposit diamond collateral with him. This was worth many times more than the millions in cash he had there... It was very difficult for him to open it, but the screams of his wife and all the chaos that was happening, he simply surrendered and opened it."

"They took everything in bags and told him that he was accompanying them to the police station, where perhaps he would get it back. They took him in a police jeep; inside sat two more policemen... They drove through a forest for at least 25 minutes. In the depths of the forest, they took him out and threw him out. It took him an hour or two to reach the road and catch a ride there. He arrived at the police station and felt that something was wrong; he wanted his money back."

"Through the cameras in his house, they saw the policemen. It turned out that these were not policemen, but four 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 policemen—they had police uniforms and a police jeep. They could have also fired two shots and killed him; it was in the middle of a forest and no one would have heard them. Or, if they had any delay, and since he was the only one who could identify them and testify, they would have killed him. They were moving slowly and patiently, and a glitch occurred."

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

"The great miracle is what Rav Berland said to him: 'I do not want your money, but your soul.' This, b"H, was a miraculous miracle with Rav Berland."

"The Rav says a word, and it is all precise. B"H, since then, after the chaos that occurred, he returned to Israel and investigated and found that those who sought his life are already in the heavens. He returned to Israel as a Charedi man, b"H, keeping Torah and mitzvot, b"H, another one of the miracles that the Rav performs."

Courtesy of the Tzaddik Hotline 02-532-6502