Freed Couple Had a Baby Boy

Last week, a bris ceremony was held for the new baby son of Pinchas and Chani Willer, the couple recently released after being jailed in Ukraine for 16 months, reports Kikar Hashabat website.

The couple had traveled to Ukraine to explore a possible job opportunity, and on their way back to the airport they stopped in Uman to pray at the gravesite of Rabbi Nachman of Breslav.

Unbeknownst to them, someone placed two pounds of marijuana in their suitcase.

The couple spent 16 months detained in Ukraine, separated from the rest of their children, who remained in Israel with relatives.

After finally being cleared of wrongdoing by police, the couple returned to Israel in May and were greeted with great celebration by family and friends.

After the long ordeal the couple experienced, the bris held at Chabad of Yerushalayim’s Ramot neighborhood was a great celebration, attended by many family, friends and prominent rabbis and community leaders.

Special guests included a representative from Ukraine, who brought blessings from the community rabbis and the Chief Rabbis, signed by the son of the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Rabbi Moshe Asman.

Also in attendance were Rabbi Ephraim Bogard, Rabbi of the Ramot Chabad congregation and Rabbi of the Chabad Rabbinical Congregation, Rabbi Shmuel Bukiet of Kfar Chabad, Rabbi Yechezkel Sofer, Rabbi Yisroel Lipsker and Rabbi Moshe Genut. Greetings were brought from Rabbi Raskin of London, Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm, Rabbi of Western Ukraine and Rabbi of Zhitomir, and Rabbi Yitzchak Belinov, Rabbi of Milan, Italy.

“The bris was very moving, everyone joined the Shehechiyanu blessing, for the fact that the couple just recently returned to Israel,” one of the participants told Kikar Hashabat website.

The name of the newborn: “Shneur Zalman“, named after the Alter Rebbe, Ba’al HaTanya, whose gravesite in Haditch the couple lived near while in Ukraine.