I knew right then that if I was saved, I would do complete teshuvah
By Barak Nixon, as told to Chananel Shapiro
IF you see me today taking a seat in my morning kollel, with my white shirt, trim beard, large black yarmulke and turned-off kosher cell phone, you might assume I’m just one of the recently married regulars, following a path that was carved out for me since yeshivah days. But in fact, this life is all new, pretty surprising, and totally unexpected. True, it’s my personal story, my own unequivocal miracle, but I’m sharing it because really, aren’t all of us living directly out of G-d’s Hand?
I was born 25 years ago in Afula. My mother is Yemenite and her father was a mori, a Torah teacher, so on that side of the family, there was always a pull toward Torah, tradition, and spiritual connection. My father is another kind of tzaddik — not exactly religious, but a person who knows the value of honoring his word, and of giving kavod to everyone, even the indigent and down-and-out. From age 13, I put on tefillin every day and would go to shul to help make the minyan. But somehow, all that started to slip during my army days and after.
I didn’t think too much about it, though — I was basically gliding through life, partnering with my brother in his barber shop and hanging out with my friends. But then, this year after Rosh Hashanah, something started to pull me from the inside. I had this inner feeling that I had to start keeping Shabbat or else something terrible would happen — and I did. I kept Shabbat Shuvah in the strictest sense: I bought a hotplate and brought it over to my mother’s house, and that’s how we ate all our Shabbat meals. Plus, it was important for me to daven in shul in the morning, but because I was afraid I wouldn’t get up in time, I stayed up all night saying Tehillim.
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