Four Days and a Lifetime   

From the gravesites of the Noam Elimelech and Sarah Schenirer to Rav Shayele of Kerestir and so many in between, 350 young women huddled together in entreaty, beseeching Hashem for their zivug and davening for their partners in prayer to merit children. While we experienced frigid single-digit temperatures and trekked through several feet of snow, it was the warmest excursion I’d ever been on

AS a rule, where to go on vacation depends on your weather preference. If you prefer it warm (as most older people do), you head south. If you like the cold and the snow (as some young people do), you head north. At times there are exceptions. I recently returned from just such an exception.

Permit me to explain.

I write these words after a four-day trip of a lifetime, in which a group of several hundred participants traveled to Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary with only two goals in mind: tefillah and chizuk. The weather wasn’t just cold, it was way beyond that. We experienced frigid single-digit temperatures along with several feet of snow, and yet it was the warmest trip that I ever had the zechus to participate in.

Our trip was organized by Ohel Sarala, an initiative that matches single women waiting for a shidduch with couples waiting to be blessed with children. Each half of the pair davens for the other, and we’ve seen over 8,000 engagements and over 1,000 babies born in the nine years since its inception.

On this trip, I joined over 350 bnos Yisrael from three continents, five countries, and dozens of cities, who visited some of the most wrenching sites in our nation’s history with red frozen cheeks and faces glowing with warmth. They walked through several feet of snow in frigid weather, bundled in several layers — yet the heart and soul were on fire.