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SEPTEMBER 24, 2020 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
From the Fire
Yom Kippur Neilah Aperture to the Al-mighty By Rav Moshe Weinberger Adapted for publication by Binyomin Wolf
T
he last Mishna in Yuma (8:9) concludes with the teaching from Rabi Akiva: “Fortunate are you Israel! Before whom are you purified and who purifies you? Your father in Heaven! As it says [homiletically]… ‘G-d is the mikvah of Israel.’ Just as a mikvah purifies the impure, so too the Holy One Blessed is He purifies Israel!” We are taught that the forty days between Rosh Chodesh Elul and Yom Kippur correspond to the forty se’ah (a measure of volume) of water constituting a kosher mikvah. And the 960 hours during this forty day period correspond to the 960 lug which are the equivalent of forty se’ah. We are so fortunate that Hashem has given us this period, culminating with today, Yom Kippur, which culminates with Neilah, through which He cleanses us of all our impurities.
The Bor Hashakah In addition to Yom Kippur, which is a mikvah in time, we have a physical mikvah right here in our shul. But there are actually two mikva’os in this shul. We can see one of them. It has beautiful tiles, and we immerse in it. But most people here have never seen the other one, the bor hashakah. That one stands behind closed doors. Thirteen years ago, when we finished building this shul, we prepared a container to receive rainwater on the roof. One windy day after it had rained, I went with Rav Bik, the rav hamachshir of the mikvah, to release the rainwater into the bor hashakah. That is the real mikvah. The water in the mikvah we immerse in every day is mayim she’uvim, water drawn
from a faucet or hose, which cannot be used as a kosher mikvah. So how is our mikvah kosher? Because there is a hole that connects the two mikva’os. By connecting the mikvah in which we immerse to the bor hashakah, we connect to the purifying rainwater which came straight from Hashem – untouched by human hands. The word “hashakah” means “neshikah, kiss” because the waters of the two mikva’os “kiss” through the hole between them. When we immerse in the mikvah, we are connecting to a source of purification straight from Heaven because of the hole connecting our mikvah to the bor hashakah, which was originally filled with rainwater.
The Lodz Mikvah During the Holocaust, the Nazis, may their names be blotted out, turned the Jewish quarter of the city of Lodz into a ghetto into which they interned the Jews. Jews were forbid-
den to immerse in the mikvah, and the Nazis cemented shut every mikvah in the Ghetto. But one group of Jews in the basement of a building adjacent to a mikvah used whatever tools they could find – spoons, knives, forks, and their own fingernails – to dig a hole in the wall between their building and the mikvah next door. Finally, they succeeded and dug a hole in the wall just wide enough for one person at a time to squeeze through to reach the mikvah. Late on the night before erev Yom Kippur, long after curfew when no one was out lest they be shot, a bochur reached the house in which the Rebbe from Radishitz was hiding. Knowing that any visitor must have risked his life, the Rebbe was very interested to see what their visitor had come about. The bochur told the Rebbe about the house with the hole in the basement leading to the mikvah. He assured the Rebbe that he had only been sent to tell certain
rebbes and roshei yeshiva so there would be almost no one there. Even though the Rebbe knew that he could be killed if he was caught outside at night, there was no question that he would attempt to make the trip, given that it was almost Yom Kippur. The Rebbe and his shammes, who later retold this story, snuck through the back streets of the Ghetto till they finally entered the home the bochur had told them about. But instead of being virtually empty, there were hundreds of Jews crowded in the house, each of whom had risked his life for the chance to use the mikvah just once before Yom Kippur. One Jew was helping each person through the hole in the wall and someone on the other side caught them. They warned every visitor to go “Schnell! Schnell! Quickly! Quickly!” so the next person could come in. The Rebbe of Radishitz commented to his shammes, “Look what Jews are willing to do to come closer to their Father in Heaven! They are starving and oppressed, but all they can think of is going to the mikvah!” Those Jews in the Lodz Ghetto connected to the source of life by climbing through a little hole, a little opening, through which they reached purification, their bor hashakah. But what is our opening? How can we connect with the pure water of Heaven on Yom Kippur? How is our Yom Kippur an immersion in the pure waters of Hashem’s Presence? We also need a little opening through which we can access the cleansing bor hashakah. Chazal teach us (Shir Hashirim Raba 1:2), “Open up for Me like an opening the size of the eye of a needle, and I
