MY PERSONAL REDEMPTION STORY

Nothing prepared Yoni Atiyah, a spiritually lost boy at the time, for the dubious experience of being in jail for five days in a damp, dark cell somewhere in the Ukraine. It was there though that he had his personal redemption.

This past winter, I was invited by the Chabad House in Chevron to farbreng with mekuravim and visitors. In between stories and insights, niggunim and internalization techniques, I took a break and became a participant at the farbrengen.

R’ Yoni Atiyah, son of R’ Victor and his father’s right hand in his shlichus, told me about a traumatic and awakening experience in his youth. He was only 15 when he sat in a Ukrainian jail and it was there that he came to know himself and his Creator.

NEAR BUT FAR

I’ll let R’ Yoni speak:

At the age of 15, I was a wild child. Unfortunately, I made a lot of problems for my father. Many white hairs in his beard are because of me.

One day, a Breslover Chassid said to my father, “Give me $1000 and I will bring your son back.” My father jumped at this offer and said, “I’ll even give you $2000.”

The man told me about an anonymous person who “donated money for people who had not yet been to Uman,” and he asked me whether I would like to go. As a 15 year old kid I said sure, why not, sounds like fun. I figured it was an opportunity to see a new place.

Together with another friend, we began looking for tickets to Uman. I had no idea what the trip involved, what was needed to leave the country, what paperwork I had to have to enter another country.

Someone heard that we were looking for tickets and asked whether we had passports. When we said no, he asked, “Then how do you expect to fly?”

We went to the Interior Ministry offices just a week before Rosh HaShana. The clerks there tried to explain to us that in order to issue a passport, two weeks were needed. But I didn’t know how to accept a no. I simply declared that I wasn’t budging until I got a passport. Miraculously, they didn’t throw me down the stairs and within an hour and a half I had a passport.

I had a passport but no ticket. Someone advised us to go to the airport and try and get standby tickets.

We went, slept at the airport and in the end, got a ticket for $770. Now the only thing missing was a visa. I didn’t even know I needed a visa.

In the meantime, someone came along who said, “I collected more money than I need for a ticket.” He asked me, a 15 year old, what he should do with the money. I told him, “Go buy beers for us!”

We sat on the floor, me with my guitar and a pile of beer bottles around me and we kumzitzed. Erev Rosh HaShana, I was in the airport while my fellow Lubavitchers were flying to the Rebbe or were at preparatory farbrengens for Tishrei with the Rebbe.

Oy, where was I, and where were they?

Not so far geographically, but spiritually, albeit without realizing it, so very far apart.

SHLIACH HELPING A SHLIACH

As we sat there, someone came along who suggested we make a group visa, meaning each of us would pay a certain amount, and he would go to the consul and obtain visas for all of us. I agreed and within a few hours he came back with visas for each of us.

There I was with my guitar and beer, my head in the clouds, and someone asked me for help. “I am in the same group that submitted a request for a visa but the paper with my visa is lost. Can you please give me your paper and I will photocopy it and give it back to you?

I naively gave him everything, my passport and all my papers. “Here, make copies and bring it back. Just don’t disturb my playing.”

An hour passed, two hours; the guy had disappeared. I started looking for him, my passport, my visa, my ticket. I was in the airport minutes before the flight and I had no documents. I decided to use my connections.

I told the shliach in the airport that I am the son of Victor Atiyah and someone had my ticket and visa (I didn’t realize they were stolen; I was still naive). The shliach used his connections and smoothed the whole way for me until we got to the plane that was about to leave for Kiev. There, on the steps, we met our “friend.” I took back my folder with the passport and ticket and the security people took us off the boarding ramp.

What happened? It was my passport but his ticket was to Odessa, not to Kiev. Nonsense, I thought. I’m sure it’s the same as a bus ticket. What difference does it make what it says on it? What difference does it make if I go via Kiev or via Odessa? The main thing is that I paid.

This was a Thursday night with Rosh HaShana falling out on Sunday night and Monday. I boarded the plane to Odessa. Before landing, they told us to get our passports and visas ready for passport control. Passport, I had. What about a Visa? The paper wasn’t on me but I was sure I was listed in their computer as having a visa.

We arrived in Odessa and I saw I had come to a third world country. From the plane, we were taken to the entrance of the terminal in a wagon hitched to a tractor. At the terminal, it was like time had stopped; it was as though Czar Nikolai forgot some guards. They did not understand a thing; they spoke nothing but Russian. And they did not know how to use technology. Check computers? There was nobody to talk to.

I tried to explain but they did not understand or did not want to understand. I even tried bribing them but they insisted, “Nyet visa.”

 A VISIT TO HELL

Then the journey to my inner galus began; and that is when the Geula began.

Everyone was nervous about getting to Uman for Rosh HaShana. The connecting flight from Odessa was the only chance to make it. And I sat and waited, hoping someone would help me. I remembered that Shneur Vigler had stayed in our home on shlichus as a bachur and was now a shliach in Odessa. I asked them to let me call Shneur.

The police gave me a thick Odessa phone book. I tried to ask them to at least let the embassy know what happened to me, but they said they couldn’t make the call. The only way was to send a shliach.

In the meantime, they gave me two options, either to enter the country and be locked up for illegally entering the country or be locked up at the airport until there would be a flight back to Eretz Yisroel. When was the next flight? That was after Rosh HaShana, on Wednesday. I preferred the second option, to remain in the airport.

Some Ukrainian policemen surrounded me and asked me to accompany them to the holding cell at the airport. We went downstairs, another flight underground and another flight and another and another.

I felt like I was in the Chassidic tales of yesteryear, like the Rebbe Rayatz in prison as a child. I suddenly began to understand the feeling of those Chassidim who were moser nefesh. What did they do and for what? They gave their lives for others, to support Torah, to perpetuate the Jewish legacy. So another Jew would be able to have the strength to get out of his personal Mitzrayim, his constraints in the service of Hashem. They endangered themselves and were themselves sent off to Mitzrayim, to prison, to exile.

We walked in silence, in utter darkness, until we reached a floor with a row of cells. They put me in a cell that had a bed, a pot for personal hygiene, a small window for air and utter darkness, the darkness of Egypt.

The door was closed and I was alone, a 15 year old. I knew it would soon be Shabbos. Nobody knew where I was. My parents did not know what happened to me. “Who knows,” I thought, “maybe the Ukrainians will drink too much and forget that I’m here. That’s it; this is my end. I won’t get out of here alive.”

In a moment, I realized there is no one to rely on. Nobody can help, not my parents, not my friends, no one. There is only G-d.

It was me alone; me and G-d.

I turned to G-d and said, “You know I don’t observe anything. I did not take this flight in order to pray; it was just for the experience. But I’m here already. Although I flew for the adventure and not to pray, we are together and I will start praying.”

I no longer remembered how to pray. With difficulty, I recalled some parts of Kabbalas Shabbos, the 12 P’sukim, a little Tanya by heart and Birkas HaMazon. What I remembered, I repeated again and again.

At some point, they opened the door and brought me food. It was meat. I decided I would not touch the treif meat. I ate an apple and cake that I had left over from the flight. That was my apple in honey.

I prayed nonstop, another Birkas HaMazon, and another and again. I may have said the Birkas HaMazon dozens or hundreds of times. I repeated the p’sukim again and Tanya again. Like R’ Mendel Futerfas in jail, whatever I knew by heart saved me from losing my mind, from losing hope, from losing consciousness.

That is how five days went by. I did not know when Shabbos began or ended, when Rosh HaShana began or ended. Five days in which I lost all sense of time.

FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT

I was in jail for five days, in solitary confinement, in galus, a galus in which I discovered my Geula, my G-d, my neshama. I cried, I prayed. I connected with the deepest part of my soul. I was in a galus which was actually a Geula.

Then the police came and took me out of the cell, from darkness to light, from galus to Geula.

All the passengers who were on the return flight were so excited, and as for me, I just wanted to eat something.

I will never forget those days. In all my life, except for my wedding day, I never had a day like that, when I felt a direct bond with G-d, like a son with his father. Only someone who was in galus can understand and appreciate what it means to be free, free to do what you really want, to live, to pray, to learn.

I, who was in galus, say to you: the greatest imprisonment is the imprisonment of galus and even there, Hashem is with us. The Rebbe is with us. They do not abandon us even in the most difficult moments.

If you are in a difficult situation, turn to G-d, write to the Rebbe.

And don’t forget to load yourself up and your children with as much Mishnayos and Tanya by heart as possible …