I witnessed something this week that I believe brought Hashem one of the greatest moments of Nachas from His heilige nation, Am Yisroel. When my beloved son Ari asked me to come out to Pomona for just a few minutes, I had no idea that I was about to witness something so deeply moving that I would spend the rest of the night searching for words to describe it.

We are a nation that, when tested, and severely tested, transcends every law of human nature. We are bound by something far beyond the natural: Banim Atem LaHashem Elokeichem. We are His children, and last night that truth was not a pasuk on a page. It was alive and breathing, weeping and embracing before my eyes.

Yes, we have our weaknesses, and yes, we can sometimes be found holding a grudge. But that is not who we are. At our core, at the deepest and most essential level of our neshamos, we are intrinsically one, and when push comes to shove, we love each other with a love stronger than anything this world can throw at us.

This week, little Shaindel bas Chaim Yehuda Leib was taken from us, tragically and suddenly, in a moment that has shattered worlds and left a void that words cannot begin to fill. The loss, the pain, and the shock are only beginning to set in, and things will perhaps never be exactly the same for the Herzberg family, for the family of the driver who struck her, and for everyone who loved her.

And beyond the grief itself, there was another layer to this tragedy, one everyone is aware of, a painful and almost unbearable dimension that could, in purely human terms, have led to something catastrophic, something that would have compounded tragedy upon tragedy.

But that is not what I witnessed.

We walked down the road leading to the Herzberg home, and as we walked, we passed the scene of the unspeakable tragedy. We passed it with trepidation, with a heaviness in our chests that no words can capture, and with the kind of silence that falls over you when you are standing at the intersection of the human and the divine, when you realize that something has happened here that cannot be undone, something that has forever changed the landscape of this quiet street and of so many special lives. We walked past it slowly and carefully, as if the ground itself was sacred and broken at once.

And then, after a walk that felt like hours, we arrived at the door. It was that beautiful, warm, open door of a Yiddishe home that represents everything Torah and Chesed stand for, the door that had welcomed so many with warmth and light, and with the feeling that inside these walls Hashem is present. We knocked softly, and it opened.

We walked in slowly, through the hallway and into the kitchen, the beating heart of this home. This was not just any kitchen. It was a kitchen where selfless conversations are held endlessly, where the only question ever asked is how to help another Yid, how to build more Torah, how to give more, how to do more, and how to be more. It was a kitchen where the currency is chesed and the language is ahavah, a heilige space, and we had come to it on the most painful of nights.

What unfolded in that kitchen at Chatzos is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life, something I do not have the words for, and yet I must try, because the world needs to know what Am Yisroel looks like when it reaches into its very soul.

Peering through rivers of tears, I saw Shaindel’s father and the driver holding each other, hugging, kissing, embracing with a love that only heilige Yidden can find in a moment like that. It was not a polite embrace, and it was not a stiff and painful courtesy. It was a real, deep, full embrace, the kind that says I see you, I feel your pain, you are my brother, and nothing, absolutely nothing, will ever change that. These were two men whose worlds had been torn apart, holding each other together.

I saw Mrs. Herzberg and the wife of the driver find each other, two Yiddishe Mamas, two mothers who understood at the deepest possible level what the other was carrying: the grief, the guilt, the love, the loss, all of it. And they held each other the way only mothers can, with every fiber, with trembling arms and broken hearts, and in that holding, something ancient and Heilig passed between them, something that no tragedy, no pain, and no human force could ever take away.

I saw Giluy Shechina. I saw human beings rising high, high above everything regular, everything natural, and everything expected. I saw modern-day Rachel and Leah.

And I felt, I truly felt, Hashem looking down and saying: This is My nation. This is why I chose them, and this is why I would choose them again.

חזו חזו בני חביבי דמשתכחין בצערא דלהון ועסקין בחדוותא דילי.

The very Sinas Chinam that brought us into Galus melted before my eyes, and in its place stood something ancient and unbreakable: the Ahavas Yisroel forged at Matan Torah, k’ish echad b’lev echad, the love that Hashem our Father hardwired into every single one of us. Last night, two families reached into the deepest, most hidden place inside themselves and found it, against all odds, in the most impossible moment.

We have so much to learn from these people. We need to learn what Ahava truly means, and what Emunah in Hashem and in His ultimate Hashgacha really looks like when it costs everything. Because the truth is that nobody does anything to you. Hashem is doing it all, in every moment and in every encounter, and every painful, confusing, heartbreaking chapter of our lives is written by His hand.

So let us not hold grudges, let us not hate, let us not pull away, and let us not allow distance to harden into walls. Let us dig deep, and then dig even deeper, and find the Ahavas Yisroel that is already there, waiting, always waiting, to help us embrace each other in our most difficult moments, when it is against all odds, when it costs us everything, and when it is the holiest thing we will ever do.

If I was proud to be a Yid before last night, I have never been this proud. Standing in that kitchen, witnessing what those two families gave each other and gave all of us, I felt it rise up from somewhere deep inside: Ashreinu Mah Tov Chelkeinu. How fortunate are we, how blessed is our portion, and how extraordinary is this nation.

That is what every person who walks through the door of this Shiva house should feel, and that is the gift these families are giving to every single one of us who is watching, listening, and learning.

So let us give something back. Let us give Shaindel, our sweet, beautiful Shaindel’e, a gift. Let us each drop a grudge today, the one we have been holding onto, the one we tell ourselves is justified, the one that has quietly hardened into something we no longer even examine. Let us let it go in her name.

Let us learn from the families involved in this awful tragedy what it means to truly embrace, to truly love, and to truly live as Banim LaHashem.

And in that merit, in the merit of Shaindel bas Chaim Yehuda Leib, in the merit of these two heilige families, and in the merit of every act of love, every dropped grudge, and every embrace that follows, may we finally, finally bring the Geulah Shleima.

Yehi zichra Baruch.

A very proud Yid,
בנימין א אייזענבערגער