\u00a0More than a week after the great disaster, and the stories that are slowly being collected from eyewitnesses and the many survivors testify to one thing - to hundreds of visible and great miracles within the valley of tears of the justice of God.<\/p>\r\n
It was easy to hear this week, even from people who are elevated above the people and somewhat distant from the teachings of Rabbi Nachman, the all-too-familiar hymn: "And even in the hiddenness within the hiddenness, surely there too is God, blessed be He.".<\/p>\r\n
Together with the recovering wounded, we sang with emotion and from the depths of our hearts: "Even behind the difficult things that are happening to you, I stand," and we all felt, the residents of the place and the survivors of the massacre, that the hand of God, blessed be He, is deep, deep, in grace and mercy - even in the difficult things.<\/p>\r\n
The security and rescue forces should be commended, for only today - a week after the massacre - is their unimaginable human greatness, of true self-sacrifice, in the simplest terms, being revealed. Through the policeman, the 'Righteous Among the Nations', who was shot in the head at point-blank range by a gun bullet that was originally intended for another purpose, and beyond the greatness of the rescuers who risked their lives and provided first aid and blocked arteries (using tefillin straps!) as deadly bullets whistled past their heads, and beyond all the people of mercy who acted fearlessly at the scene during the incident -<\/p>\r\n
This week, a story circulated in the Bnei Torah community about the human greatness of the people of Zaka-Chesed Shel Emet, whose holy and difficult work began only after the terrible massacre.<\/p>\r\n
I am bitterly weeping.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n They listened and heard: On the shelves of the Beit Midrash where the saints prayed, the textbooks of the young men studying there are permanently stored, from the end of the study day until the next day at the beginning of the 'Seder'.<\/p>\r\n As is well known, during the shooting and the shocking massacre, the blood of the martyrs was splattered everywhere, including on the bookshelves. When ZAKA forces arrived at the scene and collected the findings from the scene that required burial, they also reached the bookshelf and took with them the gemara 'Tractate Shabbat' on its binding and some of its pages, remnants of the blood of the martyr, blood that required burial.<\/p>\r\n However, as soon as the Beit Midrash reopened to students, a young avrech was seen in the prayer room, weeping bitterly and refusing to share his emotional outburst with those around him. Everyone believed that the sights of the massacre and the severe shock of what his eyes had seen were what had broken the dam of his tears, and so they left him alone.<\/p>\r\n But his eyes were wandering around the bookshelves all day long, and his hands were turning over each book as if he were looking for something.<\/p>\r\n Indeed, as he told his story, the students were exposed to another tragedy, infinitely smaller in importance than the terrible massacre, but powerful enough to rob its owners of joy.<\/p>\r\n His treasure \u2013 the Gemara Tractate Shabbat with comments and novellas that he wrote and labored over for a decade (!) was not found among the books of the Abrahams. All lines of thought regarding the place of discovery of the Gemara led towards the burial place of the saints on Mount Hanunuchot, and the Abraham's grief was unbearable.<\/p>\r\n In his distress, he turned to the ZAKA hotline and tried his luck, but in the heat of the moment, "Lost Gemara" was last on the list of priorities.<\/p>\r\n A stranger would not understand this, but someone who stood in that position and was exposed to this gemara before it even became a topic understood the great pain of the Abraha, and almost his personal grief became the grief of all the Abraha collectively.<\/p>\r\n The life's work of a Torah scholar<\/strong><\/p>\r\n We almost said it, because the head of the Jerusalem ZAKA, Rabbi Meir Aker, got involved in the story - and, realizing that the story was not about a 'lost gemara', but about the life's work of a Torah scholar over ten years, he invested all his energy and effort in searching for the book with the blood stains and clarifying the fate of the manuscripts.<\/p>\r\n Here, with your permission, we will pause for a moment and recall that Rabbi Meir Aker took the matter into his care after spending the entire day and night caring for and burying the martyrs and cleaning the synagogue of every drop of blood. After being exposed to harsh, unprecedented scenes (testimonies on the spot tell of descriptions that should not be written down at all, and may He be merciful and forgive).<\/p>\r\n Only late at night, and after a long and tiring tour that included a nightly tour of the cemetery, did a ZAKA man find the Gemara among the books that had not yet been buried, and after the pages that were being buried were separated, the Gemara and the manuscripts were returned to its owners.<\/p>\r\n I was exposed to this story from beginning to end, along with dozens of immense stories of kindness that I witnessed as a local resident and as a person among the students.<\/p>\r\n I believe that this story deserves general appreciation, since, beyond the 'obvious' treatment of scenes of massacre and killing, we, the Abrahi Kollel, learned another chapter in the extent of the dedication of the rescue forces.<\/p>\r\n \""And all those who engage in public needs in faith, the Holy One, blessed be He, will pay their wages.".<\/p>\r\n Yoredea.man@gmail.com<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His treasure \u2013 the Gemara Tractate Shabbat with comments and novellas that he wrote and labored over for a decade \u2013 was not found among the books of the Abrahams, and the Abraham's grief was unbearable. \u2022 But then Rabbi Meir Aker entered the picture. \u2022 How did it end? Here is the story.","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[2315,6345,7821,968],"class_list":["post-111297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-138","tag-2315","tag-6345","tag-7821","tag-968"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n