9 Lubavitchers and 1 Litvak at the Cemetery

From the COLlive inbox:

My name is Sarah Rivkah Kohn, and I run an organization called Zisel’s Links and Shlomie’s Club for kids/teens who have experienced the death of a parent.

One of our mothers, a wonderful Lubavitcher mother, sent me a magnificent story, and as a reader of your site, I thought it was the feel-good story I wanted to share with you. I got the mother’s permission to share anonymously.

Here is the message I got:

My son was in New York this summer, and since it’s not simple for him to come in for every Yartzeit to my husband’s Kever in Queens, he was quite excited to be able to visit.

He called some cousins and friends to join in with a minyan so that he could have an opportunity to do it all as a newly minted man of Am Yisroel, a Bar Mitzvah.

One snag: many of his family and friends who live in Crown Heights were away for the summer, and as the Yartzeit was on a Thursday night/Friday, the few men around were heading upstate and would not be available to join him on Friday.

He pulled together 6 others and counted on the fact that there were always men around the Ohel, and he would drag them over, but it didn’t sit well with him. He finally got 2 more, and now he needed just one more to make the minyan.

It was 10 pm on Wednesday, and he was getting nowhere. He called a new friend he met at the Shlomie’s Club Shabbaton, an incredible weekend for boys who lost a parent. He was venting to him when the boy said: “Oh, I can come! I’ll be home that Shabbos in Flatbush. No big deal!”

And that is how my son had his minyan completed with a Litvish boy from quite the misnaged background who would do anything for a brother.

Friday morning 9 Lubavitcher and 1 Litvak headed to the cemetery together. When they were done, my son and his friend hugged it out, and like my brother who was there reported, “It was totally silent. We were in awe of two 13-year-olds who have such an ability to support each other in a way that puts aside all Hashkafic differences.”

During these days leading up to what I hope will be the Yom Tov of Tisha B’av, I keep thinking about these two boys in mourning who feel the pain of another in the small things and the big things… and of what Ahavas Yisroel is all about.

May we be zoche to be supportive of one another, not just in times of pain but in times of immense joy. Amen!