Rabbi Ashkenazi Saved in Crash

By COLlive reporter

Congregants at the Merkozi shul in the Israeli village of Kfar Chabad will be seeing Rabbi Mordechai Shmuel Ashkenazi going up to the Torah on Shabbos morning and making the blessing of “Hagomel.”

The known Chabad rabbi and award winning author of Halacha works was involved in a car crash in Poland this week after supervising over slaughtering of a line of kosher poultry and meat.

On Thursday morning, he and his son R’ Yossi Ashkenazi were on their way to the International Airport Krakow-Balice when his vehicle collided with another one, leaving him stalled on the road and missing his flight to Israel in time for Shabbos.

“Baruch Hashem, my father is fine and aside from a dent nothing happened to his car,” one of his sons told COLlive.com. “The other car, on the other hand, was totally smashed.”

COLlive.com was also told that moments before the crash Rabbi Ashkenazi checked if the dollars for charity he got from the Rebbe and always keeps on him were indeed with him.

“After he took out the dollars and was holding them in his hand, the other car ran into them on the highway,” a source said.

Rabbi Ashkenazi, a member of the Chabad Beis Din in Israel, took a flight to Prague Thursday night and remained there before boarding a flight back to Israel.

“This was a miracle from the Rebbe,” he was heard as saying.

In the Czech Republic, he was greeted by local Chabad Shliach Rabbi Manis Barash and his staff who invited him to Chabad’s Shelanu restaurant for a warm meal and a L’Chaim for the miracle.