Rav Stern merited to see his little moshav turn from a poor, struggling hamlet to a place flooded with visitors
He was still a bochur — a chassid of the Mekor Baruch of Seret-Vizhnitz — when he took the position of rav of Meron. At the time, he was the youngest town rav in Eretz Yisrael.
Meron was a poor, struggling moshav back then, far from centers of both Torah and commerce, visited on Lag B’omer by groups of die-hard chassidim who schlepped boxes of tea biscuits and jerrycans of petel for refreshments. When Rav Stern and Rebbetzin Pesya got married, the couple build their simple homestead without running water, without a telephone, and without electricity except the little bit that came from a generator.
“We were like Adam Harishon,” Rebbetzin Stern told Mishpacha in an interview several years back. “There weren’t any roads. When I wanted to take the children somewhere, I had to load them into a wagon. But we didn’t feel like we were sacrificing. In those days it was hard for everyone, and in some ways, life was better for us. As an agricultural settlement, Meron had cows and vegetables and food to buy at the moshav’s little grocery. In the city, on the other hand, food was rationed, and people could only buy what was allotted to them through their ration cards.”
As their family grew, the Sterns knew they needed a chinuch option if they wanted to stay, but even with the blessings and endorsements of many chassidic rebbes, no one had money in those days to create a cheder. Until 1964, when the Skulener Rebbe, who worked tirelessly in Europe saving orphans and giving them a Torah education, turned his attention to helping children from broken homes in Eretz Yisrael and set up a center for them in Meron, bringing yeshivah bochurim from the center of the country to teach.
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