By land, by sea, and…by crane.
When a crane operator in Eretz Yisroel wanted to don tefillin while hundreds of feet in the air, he knew the address to turn to: his local shliach.
Rabbi Zalman Gorelik, head shliach of Be’er Sheva, is no stranger to requests to don tefillin. But the request he got on Wednesday morning still surprised him.
“Good morning, dear brother,” it read.
“I got your number from Menachem Mendel of Netivot. I need help with tefillin. I forgot mine at home, and I am up in the crane at the entrance to Be’er Sheva, and I am unable to come down. I wanted to ask if there is someone who can help me? I want to do the mitzah of tefillin, I never miss a day,” the man wrote.
Well, a few hundred feet, even if they are vertical, are not going to stop a shliach from helping a Yid don tefillin.
So Rabbi Gorelik headed to the construction site with his tefillin in a large, strong plastic bag.
Arriving at the crane, he let the operator know he was there, and the lifting hook was lowered down to where he was standing. Rabbi Gorelik hung the bag from the hook, and it began lifting the tefillin up, on their way to the operator.
On their arrival, the operator gratefully donned tallis and tefillin, and documented his tefillah up in the air, with the city of Be’er Sheva lying below. Once he finished, the bag with the tefillin were reattached to the lifting hook and lowered down to the shliach waiting below.
Indeed, nothing can stand in the way of a Yid who wants to connect to his Father in heaven, and nothing can stand in the way of a Chabad shliach who wants to help him do so…
A Jew, atop a crane, not just reaching, but shaking the heavens… pic.twitter.com/TZQuULAKwH
— #MKY מי כעמך ישראל (@MKYstatus) July 12, 2023
A crane operator in Beer Sheva realized he had forgotten a crucial part of the morning routine. He reached out and Rabbi Zalman Gorelick of Chabad was there to send tefillin higher and higher, allowing a Yid to connect. Then they came down, two men satisfied with the perfect deal pic.twitter.com/lDRstitYpp
— #MKY מי כעמך ישראל (@MKYstatus) July 12, 2023
