"Whenever you experience any sort of salvation, however small it might seem, write it down in your book of thanks"
It might have been just what America — maybe what the world — needed. The annual dinner of Yeshiva Bais Yehudah in Detroit, always an impressive event, managed, in a time of challenge and fear, to offer uplift, unity, and chizuk to hundreds of thousands of virtual participants.
It wasn’t the high-profile speakers, the president, vice president, or prime minister that did it, but it was the call of the children themselves, the rousing thank-you that came forth from talmidim and talmidos grateful to be part of an island of Torah and middos; from the rebbeim, moros, and teachers grateful to be part of the magic.
The yeshivah’s president, Mr. Gary Torgow, conceived of a novel way of acknowledging the overwhelmingly positive feedback to the event, printing up beautiful leather-bound books containing many blank pages — with a letter included. It’s about an overwhelmed activist who once came to speak with Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach:
He was done, he announced. He simply couldn’t raise money for another payroll. It was too much pressure to raise the necessary funds every single month and he wanted to close the yeshivah. Rav Shlomo Zalman conceded that this was a challenge.
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