:-)
Numerous Jews were exiled to Siberia during and after WWII, many of them
from the (now former) Soviet Union.
Among them was a special man by the name Rabbi Mendel Futerfas, a Chabad
chassid (who would later become a well-known Chabad Mashpia) interned
there in a detention camp. What occupied
him - on regular days but particularly around the chagim - was the need
and desire to keep to the Torah and mitzvot, even out in the snowy forests of
Siberia, including arranging davening both on chol and chagim.
This was particularly
challenging during the yamim nora'im, because while the Jewish prisoners
knew the regular tefillot by heart, they had difficulty remembering the
many piyutim and additions of the yamim nora'im.
And so there were a
handful of Jews there in the camp during the yamim nora'im, with neither
tallis nor machzor, minyan, nor shofar, and they tried to draw from their
memories what parts and pieces of the tefillos and piyutim they
could, eventually managing to recover at least some of the tefillos.
The one benefit - if you can call it that - was that in such a situation,
every section of tefilla takes on new meaning, deeper and clearer; and
after pouring such effort into recalling it, it acquires a greatly increased
value in the mind of the man who remembered it (as it says in ב"מ לח ע"א, that a man prefers one קב of his own to nine
קבין of his friend, and Rashi explains there that a man
values what he has invested himself in).
As they attempted to recall the tefillot, Reb Mendel came to the
well-known piyut "וכל מאמינים", and was filled with
longing for the past. He went over and
over the familiar words, in their special tune, paying great attention to the
meaning of the words.
And
then, in the middle of the niggun, a thought came to him:
Really? He asked himself. All
those Bolsheviks, Communists and atheists surrounding me every day in this camp
- the majority of whom, unfortunately, are children of Avraham, Yitzchak and
Ya'akov, and who imagine that they are going to remake the world in the
communist image, ה' ירחם - are they also מאמינים? וכל מאמינים, really? Are all those under whom I suffer daily, these people who step on all
that is holy and dear to the Jewish people, who scorn everything holy and claim
that that religion is nothing but "the opiate of the masses", חלילה - are they also believers "שהוא ואין בלתו", "שהוא כל יכול",
"שהוא מלך עולם"? [As it says in the piyut.]
Reb Mendel, as a Chasid and a ma'amin, did not let this thought
rest long in his heart, but immediately rejected it, saying, "If it is
written in the machzor, "וכל מאמינים", this must indeed be the case. Despite the fact that to the eyes of
flesh-and-blood it appears otherwise, still surely כולם מאמינים."
Nonetheless, the thought gnawed at his heart: וכל מאמינים? He saw the exact opposite before him.
And so several days passed, until one night after Yom Kippur, Reb Mendel
was lying on his bunk in the prison cabin, late at night and noticed a man on
one of the upper bunks staring at him intently.
He began to be afraid, because this was a place where a man's life was
not worth much, and murder among the prisoners was commonplace. The enormous man could crush a
"flea" like him, he thought; his face seemed like that of a robber
and a murderer. The man suddenly
descended and began to move towards him, and Reb Mendel was filled with dread
that his life would shortly come to its end, חלילה.
And then the man asked in a rough voice, "Are you a Jew?" Reb Mendel responded in a whisper, "I
am."
To his wonder, the fellow replied, "So am I."
Reb Mendel was struck speechless.
After a pause, the fellow said to him excitedly, "You know, I
fasted on Yom Kippur! I didn't know when
Yom Kippur was, and didn't even think of it, but when I was with my work group,
I saw some Jews who had received permission to walk around the yard for a
quarter of an hour under heavy guard.
Their heads were down, and their hands behind their backs... and I heard
one whisper to another: Tomorrow is Yom Kippur.
"When I heard that, I remembered the holy day, and I decided that davka
here in the detention camp, I would fast on Yom Kippur. I pretended to be ill, and didn't go to work,
and nobody suspected a thing, because I don't look Jewish at all. I fasted and lay all day on my bunk."
Reb Mendel's fear had turned to wonder, but he marveled even more as the
man continued.
"I wanted to daven," he said, "but I didn't know
any tefillot at all. I strained
my memory, and suddenly recalled one of the tefillot that my grandmother
taught me to say when I get up in the morning - a tefilla only twelve
words long: מודה אני לפניך מלך חי וקיים
שהחזרת בי נשמתי בחמלה רבה אמונתך. So I lay
in bed all day, repeating מודה אני thousands of times. Here, I spent
Yom Kippur like a Jew."
Reb Mendel heard his story, and the last of his doubts disappeared. If even this character, who to all
appearances had abandoned faith completely, believes and awakens thus, it is
clear that indeed it is true: וכל מאמינים.
