A CHANGE OF VENUE BRINGS A CHANGE OF LUCK – TWENTY YEARS LATER

After five successive heart attacks had placed their mother’s life in jeopardy, her children turned to the Rebbe and asked for a bracha. The answer was not long in coming: Change your place and you change your luck for good and for a blessing. • A fascinating story that came to its final conclusion twenty years later.

Ever since he joined the Golani Brigade, Asher Tuito had progressed up the promotion ladder both in the army and the prison services. His positions of authority have cast him as a very serious and tough man. However, all this disappears in a moment as he recalls the incredible miracle story that he experienced with his mother, when he was just nineteen years old. It all took place in the merit of a bracha from the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach. Although twenty-one years have passed since then, he still remembers every detail as if it happened only yesterday. These were the forming moments in his life that made him into a believer. “My mother lived for another twenty years after receiving the Rebbe’s amazing bracha,” Asher told us.

The fifth of seven children in a religious family, Asher was born and raised in Beersheva, where he lives today with his wife and four children. Even though he doesn’t wear a kippa, there burns a flame of faith within his heart. He has a close relationship with Rabbi Yoram Abergel of Netivot, who is known as a big supporter of Chabad chassidus and the Rebbe.

“We were raised in a home without a father. My father unexpectedly passed away at the age of thirty-eight, and my mother devoted herself entirely to our upbringing. At the time of my father’s passing, my eldest sister was fourteen years old and I was only six. My memories of him are very limited. My mother made an absolute decision never to marry again, choosing instead to invest all her strength and energy towards raising and educating her children. We didn’t have much money, but it was enough to support the entire family.

“Then one Shabbos afternoon in 5750, when I was nineteen years old and already one year into my compulsory military service, I was home on leave when my mother suddenly began to feel unwell.

“She complained of intense pressure in her chest and was sweating heavily. We tried to convince her to go to Soroka Hospital right away, but she stubbornly refused. She agreed to go only on Motzaei Shabbos after Havdala, but not one minute earlier. We prayed that her condition would not get worse in the meantime, as she was still a relatively young woman – only about fifty years old. Since we didn’t know that much about heart ailments, we gave in to her stubbornness. After Shabbos ended and we made Havdala, we immediately called for an ambulance to take her to the Soroka emergency room. As soon as the first test reports came back from the lab, the doctors quickly went to work.

“Within a matter of minutes, they brought her into the intensive care unit, where she soon lapsed into unconsciousness. The doctors updated us on her condition: She had suffered five heart attacks during the last twenty-four hours and it was only by a miracle that she was still alive.

“She lay in the hospital for three weeks under sedation and on a respirator. At first, the doctors were certain that she would never recover, as the heart attacks had done such irreparable damage to her body. Since we were a traditional family, we began to pray and we went to various rabbanim and mekubalim to ask them to pray for her as well. The family was living in Beersheva’s Sh’chuna Dalet neighborhood at the time, where we were acquainted with a Chabad Chassid named Yoram Omasi. When he heard about my mother’s condition, he suggested that I write a letter to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Rebbe’s reputation as a miracle worker was well known to every Jew, and we immediately agreed to follow the Chassid’s advice.

“The Rebbe’s answer arrived only three weeks later, when my mother’s condition had improved and she had already been released to go home. She was still very weak and in need of rest and recuperation, but thank G-d, she was alive and well. In the answer given over verbally by one of his secretaries, the Rebbe replied: ‘Change your place and you change your luck for good and for a blessing.’ We realized that the Rebbe was telling us to move from one apartment to another – but where would we get the money for such a venture? What bank would agree to give my mother a mortgage?

“We knew that if a tzaddik like the Lubavitcher Rebbe was giving us such instructions, we had to move. We had been raised upon a firm belief in tzaddikim. I had a strong connection to my mother, and I knew that such an answer from the Rebbe meant that this was something that would surely improve her health. But how could we do it?

“I reported the next morning at my army base. Since I had a very good relationship with my commanding officer, I decided to tell him about the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s instructions. He was most sympathetic to my plight, and he suggested that I arrange off-duty hours during the evenings to go out and work. However, it didn’t take me long to determine that this would enable me to earn only a fraction of the cost of buying a new apartment.

“Standing near us was a reserve soldier, and he happened to hear the whole conversation. When I finished talking to my C.O., this soldier came up to me and said, ‘Look, while I definitely believe in the Creator, I’m not a big believer in tzaddikim. Nevertheless, I have a strong feeling that the Lubavitcher Rebbe made a suggestion that is bound to be fulfilled.’ He added that his heart was touched by my concern for my mother’s welfare, and then made a vague reference that he was certain everything would work out. I didn’t bother to ask him what he meant, as I thought that he was just trying to kid me or offer a few words of encouragement. Quite the opposite was true.

“When I arrived at the base the next morning, I was in for a big surprise. My commanding officer greeted me warmly and said, ‘Listen, Asher, don’t come to the base tomorrow. Go straight to the Merkaz HaNegev branch of Leumi Mortgage Bank to speak with a young man there named Yigal, and everything will be all right.’ The C.O. refused to tell me what it was all about.

“I came home that afternoon and told my mother what my commanding officer had said. She agreed to come with me: ‘If the Rebbe asked us to move elsewhere – we’ll do it.’

“We went together to the bank, and we were stunned to discover that the reserve soldier who had listened to the conversation with my C.O. was in fact the branch manager. He had instructed the clerk to authorize a loan with his personal guarantee.

“I’ll never forget how the clerk brought out a plate of croissants, as we conducted a very warm and pleasant conversation with him. We told him about the Rebbe’s bracha, and he expressed his great interest and enthusiasm. We made all the necessary calculations together and began the process for receiving the mortgage.

“Within a few days, our home was put up for sale and was sold rather quickly – an amazing fact unto itself. The loan was naturally approved and we moved to a new, larger, and more spacious apartment.

“I worked nights over the next five years, and G-d only knows how I managed to pay off the relatively large bank loan. I clearly saw how the Rebbe was running everything; not only did he ask us to move, he also made certain that it actually happened.

“The most important detail is that my mother a”h lived for another twenty years after we moved to a new home. This year, just two days before Yom Kippur, she returned her soul to her Maker, clear in mind to the very end. She lay in Soroka Hospital after fracturing her pelvis, and she was in need of a period of rehabilitation. My brother was with her on that day, and she informed him that she wouldn’t be going to the rehabilitation center. At the time, he didn’t understand what she had meant. Shortly afterwards, she gave him a motherly blessing and passed away. The doctors concluded that her system simply gave out.”

But this is not the end of the story.

The surprising conclusion came by way of the kabbalist and gaon, Rabbi Yoram Abergel. “Some time ago, a friend of mine told me that the doctors had discovered that his mother had contracted a terminal illness. Since he knew that I had a connection with Rabbi Abergel and I frequently seek his advice, he asked if he could join me in a meeting with the rav. We arrived in Netivot on the yahrtzait of the Ben Ish Chai. There was an atmosphere of tremendous joy, and many Jews came from all over the country to take part in the celebrations. I didn’t ask anything for myself; I thought that I would just shake hands with the rav and I’d settle for that. I helped clear a path for my friend to come before the rav.

“While we were there, one of the gabbaim was asking everyone to purchase letters in a Torah scroll. Whenever someone made a contribution towards this project, they mentioned his name and he was privileged to receive a blessing from the rav. For some unexplained reason, I didn’t make a donation. Suddenly, Rabbi Abergel took the microphone and declared that there was someone present who hadn’t bought a letter, and all fundraising efforts will continue until he does. The rav kept making this announcement until I realized that he was apparently referring to me, and I made my contribution. At that very moment, the rav called a halt to the collection and proclaimed that the person who had just made a contribution would be blessed with the birth of a son! I was absolutely stunned. My wife was then in her seventh month…

“Afterwards, I went up to the counter where there were giving out pictures of the rav to all those who bought letters in the Torah scroll. I approached the gabbai, and I asked for a picture. The rav was standing nearby and heard my request, but he told the gabbai not to give me a picture. ‘He has to get a volume of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Igros Kodesh,’ the rav said. They quickly brought a volume of Igros to the rav, and he wrote the following bracha as an inscription on the flyleaf: ‘Yifat will merit having an easy birth to a most righteous son.’

“Why did I, of all people, receive a seifer of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and not a picture of Rabbi Abergel?” I thought to myself. The rav had apparently read my mind and said to me, ‘Open the seifer and read.’ I opened the volume of ‘Igros’ at random, and there was a letter discussing the importance of growing a beard. I was very embarrassed. Being clean-shaven, I immediately got the hint. I asked the rav if he could just forget the whole idea, as I felt that this was simply beyond me.

“The rav smiled and said, ‘That’s not the letter I meant.’ I remember that the date of the letter was the 1^st of Elul 5723. ‘Look at what’s written at the top of the page,’ he instructed. I looked at the page and I almost froze in my place. The Rebbe wrote: ‘And I will conclude with the content of the beginning of his letter regarding the purchase of an apartment, that G-d Alm-ghty should cause his decision, whatever it will be, to bring the blessing of ‘change your place and you change your luck for good and for a blessing,’ and in the traditional maxim, ‘open and revealed good, [perceived] even with eyes of flesh.’

“That very same week, I was about to move into a new home, after selling my previous apartment…

“About two months later, we were blessed with the birth of a son – after three daughters… I naturally invited Rabbi Abergel to be the sandek at the bris mila.”

* * *

“What truly amazed me,” said Asher Tuito as he concluded his story, “is how Rabbi Abergel brought me back twenty years. I remembered how I had already received a similar answer from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, ‘change your place and you change your luck,’ regarding my mother’s house. Incredibly, while all the contributors that day got a picture of the rav, he gave me a seifer of the Lubavitcher Rebbe with a personal inscription. But more than that, he even told me to open the seifer and showed me the same answer I had received twenty years earlier…

“I don’t understand much about the hidden worlds, but I felt this represented an incredible closing of the circle, as if the rav was making certain to remind me of the Rebbe’s bracha.”