At long last, we are finally meeting in my home. The last time I saw you was in Yerushalayim, when we discussed your daughter’s situation and what we could do to help bring her home.
I must tell you that I truly appreciate your efforts. You became involved in this story many years ago all the way from chutz laaretz.

It really began for me when I saw a video of you standing outside the Bedouin village, holding your guitar and calling out to your daughter.
Yes. I would call out, “Chein (her nickname), come home! Come back to Abba!” The village where she was living is about ten kilometers from my home in Beer Sheva. I would go there with a Tehillim and my guitar, and I’m not ashamed to say that I cried a lot. And not just there, but whenever I picked up my guitar I would weep, knowing that there’s a shaar in shamayim through which niggunim enter.

It says that “shaarei dema’ot lo ninalu—the gates of tears are never closed.”
Exactly. But I believe that this entire episode had to take exactly as long as it did. My daughter had to be there for 20 years just as bnei Yisrael had to be in Mitzrayim for 210 years. Nothing anyone did would have helped.

You never gave up hope.
Never. “Ein yei’ush ba’olam.”

Did you go to the village every day?
Not every single day because there were days when I couldn’t, but I’d say I went every day that I could.

That really touched me, which is why I phoned you and wanted to interview you about your story. We’ve met two or three times since then, and I also visited you in your home, where I met your wife and some of your children and even davened Minchah in your shul. I was very surprised when you told me a few days ago that your daughter had come home. How old was she when she left?
She was 17 and attending a local Chabad school.

Are you connected with Chabad?
No. We’re very close with Breslov. That’s the nusach we daven in the shul where I’m the rav. This is a video of our “Hallel” on Chanukah. (He shows the clip.) You’ll notice the singing and dancing. All of the tefillot are like this every day.
There weren’t any Bais Yaakov high schools near us. She went to Bais Yaakov for elementary school, but for high school we wanted her to stay nearby so we sent her to Chabad.

And she was a regular girl.
Yes, but she was also very special and very friendly. All of the girls gravitated toward her.

Then she suddenly left when she was 17.
It wasn’t sudden; it was a process. It started when she was 16, in the middle of tenth grade. People told me that she was seeing a Bedouin boy, but I didn’t want to believe it.

Do you blame yourself for that?
No. It just didn’t make any sense.

You didn’t notice anything?
Not at all, and I don’t blame myself because this is clearly what Hashem wanted. Hakadosh Baruch Hu wanted her to bring these neshamot from that place. If I felt responsible I don’t know if I could live with myself, but I know that this was Hashem’s will.

How did it begin?
It started out as visits, but when we finally learned what was going on, we sent her to live with a Jewish family in Zhitomir, Ukraine, to get her away from him. Around four months later, the mother called me and said, “I think your daughter might be expecting.” I asked her to put my daughter on the phone, and I asked her point blank if she was. “Yes, Abba,” she replied.
Her first child, Yehuda Yisrael, was born in Zhitomir. That was very painful for me. But as the song goes, “L’Abba lo sho’alim she’eilot—We don’t ask questions of our Father.” I just said to Hashem, “I don’t know if I am great enough to be able to handle this nisayon. Please help me with withstand it.”
My wife flew to Zhitomir for the brit. When the mohel said, “V’yikarei shmo b’Yisrael…” my daughter asked me what name to give him. “I don’t know,” I replied. “My head isn’t clear. Whatever name you choose, I will bless you and I will bless him.” “Then I’m going to name him after you and add the name ‘Yisrael’ because he belongs to am Yisrael,” she said.
A short time later there was some sort of problem in Ukraine between the locals and the Jews, and my daughter called to say that she was coming home for two months. I figured it would be okay, and I sent her to Kibbutz Cholit, which is located near the border with Gaza. Years later, on October 7, 2023, the residents of that kibbutz suffered a lot.
During one of Chein’s visits home, we stopped to fill up on gas. Who was the attendant at the gas station? Ibrahim’s [the Bedouin man] nephew. You can see how Hakadosh Baruch Hu orchestrated all of this. He saw my daughter and didn’t say anything, but after we left he called Ibrahim to tell him that he had seen Chein in the car with a baby in her arms.

He didn’t know that she had a baby?
No. When Ibrahim found out, he called the police to say that she had kidnapped their son and ran away. They blocked her from leaving the country and called her in for an emergency hearing at the Welfare Ministry. In the interim, they gave her three choices: she could place her son in foster care, she could live with Ibrahim in a neutral location, or she could live with him in his village, Tel Sheva. She chose the second option.
They rented an apartment in Beer Sheva and lived there for a few months, but when the neighbors found out that she was a Jewish girl living with an Arab, they ripped off her mezuzah, wrote nasty things on their walls and cursed at them on the street. When Ibrahim saw this happening, he took her back to his village. “Look,” he said. “In the village, you’ll have an entire house to yourself. No one will know who you are, and you’ll have a yard and a garden and a couple of horses. You’ll be able to live in peace.”