By COLlive reporter
A delegation of Chabad rabbis traveled to Bnei Brak on Sunday to comfort the family of the Vizhnitzer Rebbe, Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Hager, who passed away on Tuesday night at the age of 95.
Among them were Rabbi Yitzchok Yehuda Yeruslavsky of Kiryat Malachi, Rabbi Mordechai Shmuel Ashkenazi of Kfar Chabad, and Rabbi Yochanan Gourarie of Holon.
They were accompanied by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Aharonov, Chairman of both Agudas Chassidei Chabad in Israel and Lubavitch Youth Organization (Tzach) in Israel.
They were warmly greeted and seated in front of the new Vizhnitzer Rebbe, Rabbi Yisroel Hager, his brother Rabbi Menachem Mendel Hager, brother-in-law Vizhnitz Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Menachem Arenster and his nephew Rabbi Aharon Mordechai Rokeach, son of the Belzer Rebbe.
In the conversation, the Chabad rabbis expressed their sorrow for the loss of the Rebbe who led one of the largest Chassidic groups in the world and who admired the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the accomplishment of his Shluchim.
In fact, it was a visit in 1994, a month after Gimmel Tammuz, when the Vizhnitzer Rebbe visited Ukraine and was invited by the Chabad Shluchim to serve as a sandak for a bris for a 23 year-old Jew.
It was one of the many brisim that were performed at the time in the city of Berditchev by the Shliach Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm and the then bochur Yosef Yitzchok Amar.
“During the whole bris, he was davening and was later honored with naming the man with the name Shmuel,” recalls Amar, today a Shliach in France. “He then gave him $50 as participation.”
“We later has a 30 minute conversation with him in private where he asked us all about our work in the area and he praised the Rebbe and the Shluchim that although it was just a month after the Rebbe’s passing, we continue in full force.”
“At some part of the conversation, he curiously asked us why this grown man agreed to have a bris. I answered: It was the pintale yid. He was very touched by that line and repeated it a few times.”
