Strengthening Words: The Legendary Gabbai Rabbi Yosef Assoulin with New

Shuvu Banim International continues the saga that inspires teshuvah (repentance), with more holy words of inspiration from the home of the Gaon and Tzaddik, Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a, as told by the legendary gabbai, Yosef Asulin shlit"a. "When the Rav says something, he stands behind his words," Rabbi Asulin continued. "In the year 5760 (2000), we arrived at our teacher Rav Berland’s apartment in Uman. The Rav entered his room and told me he was just going to pray Mincha. I thought to myself that after all the exhaustion of the journey to Uman, the Rav would finish his prayer quickly, but after two hours, when I checked, he was still in the middle of his prayer. The hours passed and I waited for the Rav to finish Mincha, until finally, after 8 hours, the Rav finished praying Mincha. After eight hours of Mincha, our teacher Rav Berland asked to pray Maariv immediately and stood for another hour and a half."

"I did not understand the reason for the length of the prayer, until at the Rosh Hashanah Kibbutz in Uman, the Rav approached someone and suddenly said to him, 'I prayed for you for 8 hours so that you would reach the Kibbutz.' And not only him; this Jew arrived in Uman for Rosh Hashanah with his entire family. I later approached that Jew to clarify the meaning of the Rav's words, and he told me, 'Yosef, you don't know what miracles I experienced. The entire United States was closed to flights (this was during the time of the fall of the Twin Towers). Suddenly, an idea popped into my head to travel to Canada.' In retrospect, it turned out that thousands of others had the same idea to travel to Canada. Miraculously, the travel agent saved the flight tickets to Uman specifically for him. 'I don't understand how it happened,' he told me. I knew it was from the Rav's eight hours of prayer."

"In the past, the mikvah in Uman was located below, near the magnetometer complex. On the night after the holiday, we took the Rav to immerse before he entered the holy Tziyun of our Rebbe (Nachman). Afterward, Kosovsky and I went up with the Rav toward the Tziyun, and suddenly the Rav leaned on us while his breathing stopped. We waited a little until the Rav returned to his strength, and immediately afterward, we flew back to Israel. In Israel, the Rav was supposed to be the Sandak at the brit of Rabbi Pinchas Bik’s son, but the Rav sent word to him through Kosovsky that he should take his father-in-law, the tzaddik Rabbi Shabtai Horowitz zt"l, to be the Sandak. The Rav also told Kosovsky that we should travel to Safed and prepare a place for him to stay. Kosovsky pointed out a house in Kfar Kanaan to me, but I didn't listen to him. After we searched the entire village, we finally arrived at the same house that Kosovsky had pointed out at the beginning, and which the Rav and the Rabbanit actually arrived at in the end."

"This was during the Ten Days of Repentance. We returned to Jerusalem and loaded cabinets full of books from the home of our teacher Rav Berland shlit"a in order to bring them up to Kfar Kanaan. One day, the Rav was walking in the garden, lost in deep thought, until the son of the apartment owner saw him and came down to speak with him, as he wondered what a Jew from Jerusalem was looking for in Kfar Kanaan. The Rav answered him that he had come to the north because he was not feeling well and had come to rest. That Jew replied to him, 'You are not feeling well? I am a doctor from Shaare Zedek; let me give you a quick check-up and I will see how I can help you!' Indeed, after a quick check-up, he detected a heart problem with the Rav and immediately organized a special treatment for him with a heart specialist, the head of the cardiology department at Shaare Zedek, who was his friend. That is how it was, and in the merit of the Rav’s prayers, he traveled to the very place from which his salvation grew; the Rav received the appropriate medications and was completely healed."