How surprising can it be to open an envelope of letters collected over the years? It’s nice to go down memory lane and recall special moments, to reread blessings from the Rebbe, to relive the events in diaries describing years of learning in the Rebbe’s mosdos.
But as important as it is to remember uplifting Chassidishe experiences, they are usually not surprising. However, Mrs. Tziri Levanoni of Kfar Chabad was surprised.
It all began while preparing for Pesach one year. As Mrs. Levanoni cleaned out some drawers she came across a drawer in which she kept an envelope with letters and various envelopes that had accumulated over the years.
Mrs. Levanoni did not usually go through all the pages, letter by letter, for Pesach, but that year she decided to do so. Not that it was necessary for Pesach, since the drawer was clean and not used for chometz.
She removed a letter out one of the envelopes with trembling hands and read it again and again. She found it hard to believe her eyes. It was a letter in her handwriting and on the envelope she had addressed it to the Rebbe. The letter contained her request for a blessing for an easy birth and a live, viable child.
She remembered the circumstances in which she had written the letter. At the time, she was on bed rest at her mother’s house in Kfar Chabad before the birth of her third child, Menachem Mendel, who today serves as shliach and director of the Chabad House in the HaRishonim neighborhood in Ramat Gan. She had written this request, as Chassidim do.
Was it possible that the letter had not been mailed to the Rebbe?! But the Rebbe answered it! We got a letter in response!
She quickly searched for the Rebbe’s letter and found it. It was addressed to her and the Rebbe wrote, “… In response to informing me of her situation, may Hashem complete her pregnancy properly and easily, and may she give birth to a healthy, viable child in the right time properly and with ease. The p’n with her letter will be read at an auspicious time at the gravesite of the Rebbe, my father-in-law. With blessings for good news in the matters of which she writes …”
She remembered that after writing her letter to the Rebbe, she had put it in an envelope and waited for her husband to return from Tzfas, where they lived at the time and where he worked all week, so she could give it to him to mail. Later on, she could not remember for certain whether she had given it to him and assumed that she had.
Now, four years later, it turned out she hadn’t. The letter was still in her house. But she had written to the Rebbe and even if the letter hadn’t been mailed, it had arrived … The Rebbe received her request and had sent a response and the blessings were fulfilled.
“I received a standard response from the Rebbe for a letter that was not standard at all. But it reached its destination.”
***
When I heard this story directly from Mrs. Levanoni, I was excited by the message it illustrates. There is no difference between then and now. Writing to the Rebbe gets the letter to its destination. Because the Rebbe “feels” a Chassid, always, in every situation, any place. “And the Rebbe will find a way to answer.”