“I just sat down and I pashut cried. I said Tehillim, and I said, ‘Ribbono shel Olam, just help me out.’ As I closed my Tehillim, the phone rings...”
Rabbi Yaakov Bernfeld is the director of Adopt-A-Kollel, the revolutionary organization that pairs communities, shuls, businesses and individuals with kollelim in Eretz Yisrael. Their flagship model coordinates partnerships wherein entire shuls or communities collectively support a kollel. Also under the Adopt-A-Kollel umbrella is a somewhat lesser-known initiative called the Menuchas Hanefesh program, which works on a more personal scale. Instead of a group supporting a kollel as a whole, an individual donor partners with a specific avreich and his family, providing steady assistance to ease financial strain.
A few weeks ago, a donor approached Rabbi Bernfeld, telling him that he wanted to undertake the financial support for two avreichim. Rabbi Bernfeld identified two suitable candidates and his staff got to work on the necessary paperwork, which can take some time. When things were in place, Adopt-A-Kollel’s Israeli coordinator called the recipient family to inform them they’d be receiving a monthly stipend, courtesy of a generous donor who wanted to partake in the zechus of limud haTorah.
The avreich’s wife, who took the call, heard the news and started sobbing. “I want you to know,” she said finally, her sobs subsiding into quiet, shaky breaths, “my husband and I both come from non-frum families, and it’s only with mesirus nefesh that my husband is able to sit and learn. We get no support, and recently it became so difficult that I reached a breaking point.
“Today, I just sat down and I pashut cried. I said Tehillim, and I said, ‘Ribbono shel Olam, just help me out.’ As I closed my Tehillim, the phone rings with the news that a respectable sum would be deposited into our account each month.”
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