Parshas Mishpatim

A fam­ily blessed with many chil­dren once ar­rived in Toronto. This house­hold of twelve was chas­sidim of the Sku­lener Rebbe. The fa­ther of the fam­ily be­came very sick and his con­di­tion steadily de­te­ri­o­rated; he strug­gled to over­come the de­bil­i­tat­ing dis­or­der. Sadly, he passed away, leav­ing the griev­ing widow and her ten young chil­dren with­out a fa­ther.

R. Eliyahu now came into the pic­ture; he would not leave them lack­ing in their time of trou­ble. He be­gan by col­lect­ing a large sum of money for them. He also es­tab­lished an of­fi­cial fund to sup­port each mem­ber of the be­reaved fam­ily.

How­ever, he didn’t stop at merely al­le­vi­at­ing their hunger. When a mem­ber of this fam­ily reached mar­riage­able age, he searched for a suit­able spouse for them. He ar­ranged for the needs of each cou­ple, and he did not rest un­til he was con­fi­dent that they had ev­ery­thing they re­quired. He did not help them in or­der to check -off a box, en­dow­ing them with the bare min­i­mum nec­es­sary to al­le­vi­ate their un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion. Rather, he mar­ried off all ten of them, as­sist­ing them as if they were of il­lus­tri­ous sta­tus. He wor­ried for them as if they were his own chil­dren, tire­lessly en­sur­ing that they needn’t be em­bar­rassed or ashamed. It is in­ter­est­ing to note that af­ter R. Eliyahu’s pass­ing, as his fam­ily sat shiva, the Sku­lener Rebbe came to com­fort the mourn­ers. Al­though he ar­rived in Toronto at 3 A.M. be­cause of an air­plane de­lay, he made a spe­cial re­quest of the fam­ily that they re­ceive him at this late hour, due to the travel mishap. He ex­pressed his sin­cere grat­i­tude to R. Eliyahu’s fam­ily for the kind­ness to his afore­men­tioned chas­sidim.