TRANSFORMING THE WORLD THROUGH TEXT MESSAGING

Technology in the service of Torah is an old story. Now, text messaging (SMS) has become a powerful tool which reminds thousands of Jews to put t’fillin on every day, along with a message that goes straight to the neshama. * Yisroel Asulin, who came up with the idea, tells us about “SMS-T’fillin,” its impact, and the segula for donors.

One fine day, the “SMS T’fillin” staff received a text message: “You don’t know what you’re doing for me! You’ve saved my life …” When they called the person back, they found out that he was a 45 year old Israeli who had apparently signed up for the service through a shliach. He was in the hospital after a bone marrow transplant and had been in total isolation for three months. It was just him and his telephone.

The man burst into tears. “If not for your messages every day, I would not be able to speak with you today. On one of my worst days, when I was experiencing a severe crisis, I had no more strength to live and I gave up on life. Then I got a text message from you, ‘G-d gives you gashmius. Elevate it to ruchnius. Put on t’fillin with joy and bring the Geula.’ I suddenly realized that I have to continue living. G-d gives me a mission and the ability to carry it out. Since then, the strength to overcome the terrible loneliness, the pain and the treatment, has come from your text messages. They are a lifeline for me.”

Stories like these are commonplace with over 10,000 subscribers to “SMS T’fillin.” I spoke with Yisroel Asulin, the man behind the idea and the activities. It started as a local project among his mekuravim in Eilat and has expanded exponentially across the country.

“While on shlichus in Eilat, I made a commitment, as a gift to the Rebbe, to get forty people to put on t’fillin. Boruch Hashem, I was able to carry it out. Some of the mekuravim bought new t’fillin to replace their old ones and others started from scratch.

“I thought it would be a good idea to send a text message every morning to remind them to put on t’fillin. I used my time on the way to yeshiva to speak with taxi drivers or people I met on the way, about putting on t’fillin. When someone said he was willing to do it every day but that he usually forgets, I promised to remind him with a text message. After a few months of such offers, I had a list of nearly 400 people. They were divided in my phone into categories based on what time was convenient for them. They received the reminder along with a Chassidic aphorism, usually from the HaYom Yom of that day, translated into modern Hebrew.”

For example, there are messages that say, “The King of the Universe wants you to be constantly happy,” “Shabbos – the day that gives you strength for the entire week,” or “Let your brain be in charge.”

As the number of subscribers grew, Asulin and his friends founded “SMS T’fillin.” With the advent of bein ha’z’manim he campaigned among bachurim, Anash, and the public at large to include more people in this wonderful service which is completely free.

DAILY DOSE OF CHASSIDUS

Until now, Yisroel wasn’t willing to be interviewed. However, knowing that an article in Beis Moshiach will provide our readers with access to this powerful tool convinced him.

How easily any Chassid can make an impact on friends and acquaintances will be demonstrated by what R’ Aharon Kupchik, from the hanhala of Yeshivas Tomchei T’mimim in Beer Sheva, has to say:

“I met a baal t’shuva and got to talking to him about what brought him to Lubavitch. He said that two bachurim met him at the t’fillin stand in Eilat and took down his phone number. From then on, for a long time, he received text messages that inspired him and motivated him to take on more and more mitzvos and customs and to be in touch with the shliach in his city. He advanced in his religiosity and went to a yeshiva where he became a Tamim. And it all began with a daily text message!”

How does it work?

“It’s simple. When you put t’fillin on with someone, you don’t start lecturing him about some new project that he can join. You just ask for his phone number. You tell him, ‘Starting tomorrow, you will get a daily text message that will cheer you up and remind you to put on t’fillin.’”

Yisroel urges Anash to take advantage of this service and sign up their contact people whom, to the best of their knowledge, do not put t’fillin on every day. As for the skeptics he says, “Of the twenty people who were added to the list without their knowledge, only three asked to be removed (unsubscribing is easy – you do it by replying with the word “Geula”). In other words, seventeen of them are happy to receive the text message and even if they don’t actually put on t’fillin, they receive a Chassidic-Geula message.”

When he talks about the impact the text messages have on subscribers, he is dramatic. “The Rebbe demands that we transform the world today. How can we transform the world? In today’s day and age, a Chassid at home on an ordinary day, even without taking t’fillin on mivtzaim, can sit in front of the computer or tablet and simply sign up the people on his list so they receive a daily Chassidic message along with a reminder to put on t’fillin. That is how you can transform worlds in an instant.”

The members of the SMS T’fillin staff, who encounter Israelis from all walks of life every day, through chats that are sometimes light and sometimes quite probing, have a different kind of outlook about the best way to reach people.

Yisroel says, “The average Israeli believes in G-d and does not need us to convince him of the truth of the Torah and its eternal value. Polls show that 90% of Jews in Eretz Yisroel believe in G-d and the Torah and yet, 75% of them do not live what we would call a religious life. Our job is to get them to try it and see how good it is; to enable them to experience Judaism as it is illuminated by Chassidus.

“Many people who work on bringing Jews back, waste precious time proving the veracity of Torah when this is a given to the average Israeli. What’s hard for him is to overcome the mindset that is burned into his psyche thanks to his secular education or because of the media, which claims that the Torah and mitzvos rob us of life when the opposite is true.”

Asulin says that he has had countless hours of deep discussions with all sorts of people on this very point, specifically what the Rebbe says regarding the Geula, that it won’t take away our Olam HaZeh; it will liberate us from those constraints that limit, restrict, confine and obstruct, and how this applies to each and every Jew.

In fact, that pretty much sums up what this amazing project called “SMS T’fillin” is all about, giving the recipient of the text message a daily booster shot of Geula-living: You are worthy, G-d loves you, put on t’fillin, do mitzvos and give yourself a great day and life. Or, as it would be said in Chassidus (translated into modern lingo), G-d wanted to do good to His creations.

As for the feedback, it’s tremendously positive.

THE TEXT MESSAGES GOT THE BACHUR BACK TO YESHIVA

About a year ago, a team of about fifty bachurim went on a special trip to visit the high schools in the south in order to sign up as many people as possible for their text messages. They went to a high school in Beer Sheva; there, they approached someone and offered a daily reminder to put on t’fillin. The guy exclaimed, “I don’t believe it! It’s them!”

To the bachurim’s surprise, he told them, “A friend of mine has been getting the texts for a year now and he can’t thank you enough.” When he reached the friend by phone, the friend warmly thanked the bachurim and said that since then, he hasn’t missed a single day of putting on t’fillin. Of course, he highly recommends the service to anyone who will listen to him.

As they continued on their way, they stopped at a junction in order to find out how to reach their next destination. After receiving directions and saying thank-you, they spontaneously asked, “What about t’fillin?”

To their amazement, the person said, “Every morning I get a text about t’fillin.” When the bachurim found this hard to believe, he took out his mobile device and read the text he had gotten that morning.

Many bachurim and Anash who go on mivtzaim use this medium in order to convince people to put t’fillin on during the week. One of them is Rabbi Yeshavam Segal of Kfar Chabad who goes on mivtza t’fillin in Rishon L’Tziyon. One time, when he walked into a new store and suggested that the owner put on t’fillin, the man said that not only did he put t’fillin on every day, but thanks to his daily reminders he had gotten much more involved in Judaism. He had kashered his house, had begun davening at least one t’filla with a minyan every day, and had even joined the Tanya shiur in Rishon L’Tziyon.

Similarly, the shliach of Givatayim, Rabbi Beckerman, makes it his business to sign up everyone he meets, and he has already signed up the entire municipal workforce and even the mayor who belongs to the Kadima party.

In the feedback from people who receive the text messages, there are wonderful stories. I can share a few with you here.

One person who is currently receiving the text messages sent the following message, “I am in Germany. Thanks for the texts. I did not miss a single day. I would not have taken my t’fillin abroad if not for your text messages.”

Rabbi Boruch Feldman, who has added many subscribers, recounts:

I met someone whom I had convinced two years ago to put on t’fillin via these text-message reminders. To my surprise, he took out a notebook in which he had written down all the aphorisms in the texts and he said, “When I am feeling down, or when I don’t feel like doing mitzvos, I open this notebook and get the strength to power on.”

Once a year, the SMS T’fillin team conducts a survey to measure people’s satisfaction with the service. The responses are truly inspiring. One person said he was a yeshiva bachur in a non-Chabad yeshiva in Yerushalayim. A Lubavitcher bachur had met him while on mivtza t’fillin. He did not look at all religious. It turned out he was a very good student, from a good family, but due to certain life experiences, he had dropped almost everything and was out on the street.

This student related, “All the conversations and pressure exerted by my family and rabbanim did not help. It was your text messages that brought me back to my family and to yeshiva. I thought – I am certainly worth no less than those irreligious people who get the text messages, so I decided to come back. Thank you, and please don’t unsubscribe me even though I put t’fillin on every day.”

A fellow by the name of Assi Levy of Ramat Aviv said:

“I did not sign up for your service, and I have no idea who gave you my phone number, but you don’t need to unsubscribe me. It took some time but I got used to it. I have been putting t’fillin on for three months now!”

And there was even this story:

On a call to one of those on the list being surveyed, they reached a young Arab. Oops! Mistake. These things happen. The caller assured him that he would be unsubscribed immediately, but the man pleaded, “Don’t delete me! Ever since I’ve been getting your text messages, I have changed my behavior and I am trying to be a better person.”

MONEY IS NO BARRIER

Everybody knows that in Israel, text messaging represents a significant portion of the monthly cell phone bill. Naturally, a project this big runs up monthly bills in five digits. However, Asulin is not only not nervous about initiating a new subscribers’ campaign which will increase the bills by thousands more sh’kalim, he’s actually relaxed about it.

“If I get a text from 500 kids who want a daily text reminder, I can’t tell them no! When you know that you are doing something that Hashem wants, and there is nothing personal mixed in, you have nothing to worry about.”

Asulin, who already owes a lot of money even as he continues to expand the project, has this to say to shluchim, “Fear of what will happen if you enlarge the budget will stop you from doing. Run, do, expand, and enlarge. The money will come.”

He says this does not contradict what the Rebbe said about mosdos operating in a normal way, since the Rebbe himself said regarding schools, for example, that when children want to attend without paying, they must be accepted:

“When a principal of a school, for example, wants to indulge his employees with an outing because this is important for their well-being, he needs to calculate whether it makes sense financially. However, when someone wants a text message to remind him to put on t’fillin – with all respect for the budget – financial considerations cannot prevent someone from receiving what we, as Chassidim, have to offer him.

“At the same time, you need to oversee income and expenses and do it in a systematic way with proper bookkeeping, non-profit corporate status, receipts, a board, etc.”

Our conversation went on to financial miracle stories that happened to Asulin or to donors of his project.

I SEND THE BILLS TO HEAVEN

“There is a school in Eilat which is the flagship of our activities. An entire article can be written about it. It’s a school that had obscene graffiti on the walls. Once the students started receiving our text messages, a tremendous change took place. One of the students once asked me, ‘From where do you have the money to send these texts?’ I answered him with a smile, ‘I send G-d the bill and He sends the money.’”

In order to understand how big this SMS T’fillin operation is and why it is this way, consider the following. In order for the system to operate professionally, it must be consistent (considering that one person putting t’fillin on one time is an entire world; all the more so for hundreds and thousands of people). In order for the text message to be effective, it has to be received at a convenient time. The computerized system (which is not directly connected to the cell phone company) sends thousands of text messages simultaneously every half hour. Today, the cheapest rate (which large corporations like banks and credit card companies receive) is 12-13 cents a text. That means that sending 10,000 texts a day costs at least 1200 shekels ($323) a day!

In the beginning, a Russian man who worked for the cell phone company got involved. He wasn’t religious but he loved the idea, and he lowered the price to 10 cents per text message under seventy characters. Despite the reduction, many were the time that the text ran over the seventy character limit, which doubled the cost. The bachurim continued sending text messages without a financial base to pay for them. At some point, they faced hundreds of thousands of shekels of unpaid bills.

“The first miracle is that the company did not stop the texts for even a day. I know of another company whose service was cut because of a debt of 20,000 shekels. Later on, because of our payment problems, we met with the management. During that meeting, we discovered that a series of miracles had occurred.

At one of the meetings of the corporate directors of the company, the accountant angrily asked, “Who allowed this to happen? How do you allow a customer to run up such huge debt?” The room was silent for a while and then one of the managers said, “I allowed it to happen. They are not customers. They are partners!”

Their debt was reduced to 120,000 shekels ($32,254). “I have instructions from the Rebbe to deal primarily with the spiritual development of the project, i.e. adding people to our list, and so I am not that involved in fundraising. Boruch Hashem, the money comes in and whoever lends a hand sees open miracles.”

Come on! Every director of every mosad makes the same claim…

“I mean it! Whoever donates to a mosad of the Rebbe sees miracles. Furthermore, when someone makes a donation to SMS T’fillin, it goes directly for the text messaging. There are no salaries, no extraneous costs. The bachurim who are involved are all volunteers. Every shekel that is donated goes towards text messages that remind people to put on t’fillin.”

After reading the Rebbe’s answer to him in the Igros Kodesh, Asulin spends most of his day learning in Kfar Chabad. He spends a small amount of time translating the daily HaYom Yom into text lingo and on overseeing the sending texts out to subscribers based on the lists in the computer database.

Donations come in, as do miracle stories that donors experience. M.A. attended a Chassidus shiur with Asulin and heard about this wonderful project. He said he wanted to make a donation. Asulin told him that when a donation is made on a monthly direct deposit basis, it goes directly to the company that provides the text messaging. M.A. decided to make a monthly direct deposit, and a month later he excitedly reported that his monthly salary had doubled!

The same thing happened with a man from Kfar Chabad who owns a small alarm company. After deciding to pay for 3000 texts a month, a short time later a new avenue of income opened for him that increased his monthly income significantly.

Another person with an average income decided to stretch himself and give a fifth of his income to SMS T’fillin. He merited seeing open miracles and became a wealthy man.

MAINTAINING A BALANCE

The Chassidic agenda of SMS T’fillin is clear: When a Jew starts his day with a good action, word or thought, his entire day will be good. One mitzva leads to another, and it doesn’t have to be something big. Any good deed draws another good deed in its wake. Even when the aphorism is explicitly about fulfilling a mitzva, Asulin maintains a balance. He doesn’t want to come across sounding like a policeman; he wants the recipient to want to do the mitzva.

In addition, every message is connected to the Geula. The entire project is in fulfillment of the only remaining shlichus – kabbalas p’nei Moshiach Tzidkeinu.

As for plans for the future, Asulin says, “We plan on starting an Internet site which will respond to all the questions and needs of Israelis that have to do with Torah and mitzvos, Geula and Moshiach. We also want to start an SMS Neshek to remind women to light Shabbos candles and provide the candle lighting time. We can’t do this directly, but would like this to be run by women; we would be happy to have it included in our text messaging system.”

EXPANDING IT FURTHER

We want to thank the Rebbe MH”M for the z’chus to be involved in a project like this that gives him so much nachas and definitely hastens his hisgalus.

Additional thanks goes to Rabbi Erez Bendetovitz, the Chabad rosh yeshiva in Eilat where the SMS T’fillin idea was thought up, for his support and help throughout; Yosef Levy who runs the project very devotedly; Shmaya Hecht for his help in writing, wording and setting the ideological tone; to R’ Eyrah Frishman for photography and staying the course, and of course, to the numerous bachurim and Anash who are involved whether financially or in other ways and make this project a success.”

Every one of us can connect hundreds of people to the Rebbe and remind them to do mitzvos. There are people that you know who can use a reminder to put on t’fillin or who would benefit from receiving an inspiring text message that will motivate them to do mitzvos. It is so easy to do this via email or text messaging.

This applies even more so to those running Chabad houses whose guest books are full of phone numbers of people who have passed through. They usually don’t have the time to keep in touch with all of them. You can keep people in touch with the Rebbe all year through these messages and then, when you actually speak to them, you are not renewing an old relationship.

All subscriptions and texts are absolutely free of charge, and you can include cell phone numbers from (nearly) all over the world. You really can “transform the world today.”

To add people to the SMS list send an email to: SMStfilin@gmail.com or visit our website: www.tfilin.net