“My wife had gone in for yechidus hoping to receive one very important blessing. She gave several people the opportunity to pass her in line, and she ended up being one of the last people privileged to go before the Rebbe. As she stood before the Rebbe’s penetrating look, she felt his great love for all his Chassidim…”
Translated by Michoel Leib Dobry
The Tilles family is a “charter member” of the Chabad community in the Holy City of Tzfas. With the express instructions of the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, they left Crown Heights and established their residence in the city of Kabbalah in the Upper Galilee.
The head of the family, Rabbi Yerachmiel Tilles, is one of the founding directors of the Ascent Institute. A warmhearted Chassid with a perpetual smile on his lips, he is well known throughout Eretz Yisroel and the world at-large for his uncanny ability to tell Chassidic stories from generations ago.
Rabbi Tilles and his wife, Shulamis, have two sons: Yehuda Shmuel and Yosef Yitzchak Eliyahu. They were born after the couple had been married for approximately ten years and only after they were privileged to receive a very special bracha from the Rebbe. The story of their sons’ birth is most unique and moving.
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“Four years after we had immigrated to Eretz Yisroel and settled in Tzfas we still hadn’t been blessed with children. In 5740 we were on a visit to New York and we were privileged to have a yechidus with the Rebbe. Before going in we wrote a kvittel with a list of requests we wanted to make, a considerable portion of which dealt with our desire for a bracha to increase the size of our family. This was not our only private audience with the Rebbe. We had been privileged to enter the Rebbe’s inner chamber shortly before our wedding, and it was a very special and unique experience.
“During the yechidus the Rebbe’s face shone, and he gave us an abundance of brachos. Every subject raised in our letter merited his special attention, save one – having children. The Rebbe totally ignored our plea to receive a bracha for children. When we left Gan Eden HaElyon I chose to look at the glass as half full: I was extremely pleased by all the brachos we had received. However, my wife, who had been anticipating the main bracha, was distraught, and she regretted the fact that she hadn’t asked the Rebbe expressly for this bracha while in his presence.
“Later, we recalled that there was one bracha that the Rebbe repeated three times during the yechidus. On several issues the Rebbe had mentioned that ‘everything should be in complete health.’ We were already well established in the ways of Lubavitcher Chassidim, and we knew that if the Rebbe chooses the unusual step of noting something three times it isn’t for naught.
“Six months later the Rebbe’s words became quite clear. The yechidus had taken place during the month of Tishrei. A few days before Pesach, on the tenth of Nissan, we were driving from Netanya to Tzfas. Shortly after passing Karmiel, I lost control of the car, which flipped over several times before eventually landing along the side of the highway. Those brief moments were terribly frightening. As we lay there in the upturned car, we were certain that our time in this world had come to an end.
“The car was completely totaled. I’ll never forget those terrifying moments. However, the power of life is stronger than all else, and after the initial shock wore off, we managed to get out of the overturned car unassisted. Incredibly, we had escaped this harrowing experience uninjured without even a scratch. When we looked at the wrecked automobile and then at ourselves we immediately realized that we had been saved by a tremendous miracle. In a case of amazing Divine Providence, among the drivers in the chain of cars that had stopped due to the accident was the owner of the produce store in Tzfas’ Kiryat Chabad apartment complex. He drove us back to Tzfas, stunned by the extent of this incredible miracle.
“Everyone who saw the condition of the car was flabbergasted by how we had emerged unscathed. Several hours later when we were back at home we remembered what the Rebbe told us in yechidus: ‘Everything should be in complete health.’ Now all the pieces in the puzzle fit.”
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“Just before Yud-Tes Kislev 5742, my wife decided to fly alone to New York for a visit to 770. The ‘private audiences’ with the Rebbe had stopped and people began meeting with the Rebbe in organized groups.
“My wife went in as part of a group of English speakers. After the Rebbe gave them a general blessing, they each passed by him to receive a more personal bracha. Shulamis had gone in for yechidus hoping to receive one very important blessing. She gave several people the opportunity to pass her in line and she ended up being one of the last people privileged to go before the Rebbe. In a clear voice, she requested a bracha for children.
“As she stood before the Rebbe’s penetrating look, she felt his great love for all his Chassidim. She felt in her heart that if this is how the Rebbe shows his love, who knows how great G-d’s love is for the Jewish People. The Rebbe said ‘Amen’ to her request, and she left the holy room filled with joy and happiness.
“When she returned to Eretz Yisroel she told me about everything that had happened in the yechidus. We were confident that the Rebbe’s bracha would be fulfilled quickly – and so it was.
“Our prayers were answered just a year and a half later, when we were blessed with the birth of our first son – Yehuda Shmuel, in the tenth year of our marriage.
“Five years later, we had a very strong desire for another child. We sent the Rebbe numerous letters in request of a bracha for more children, but we received no reply. Then one day, to our great joy, we were informed that an addition to our family was imminent. Several months later, we were blessed with the birth of our second son – Yosef Yitzchak Eliyahu. This brings us to the most amazing part of the story: Shortly after the bris in Tzfas we received a letter from the Rebbe’s secretariat. They were writing to apologize because they had only recently found a letter that the Rebbe had written to us about nine months earlier on a certain date, however, they were only sending it to us now. The date on the letter was the mikveh night…”
AND WHEN THE NAME CAME FORTH FROM HIS MOUTH
Before R’ Yerachmiel Tilles began his association with Chabad Chassidim, his father had called him Rachmiel, not Yerachmiel. “Prior to my involvement in Yiddishkait I wasn’t particularly interested in the matter because I had a non-Jewish nickname. When I later asked people about it, they told me that they were certain it was short for my full name. However, my father stated with conviction that he had named me after his father, my paternal grandfather. The issue always arose whenever I was called up for an aliya to the Torah or when I was asked to sign my name in Hebrew.
“At a certain point I decided to write a letter to the Rebbe on the matter. After receiving no reply I wrote a second time – without affixing my signature and asking him what my real name was. The Rebbe responded with a letter, noting that my name is Yerachmiel – and that’s what I’ve been called ever since. Five years later, I traveled to Chicago to visit my aunt, my father’s sister, who was ninety-five years old at the time, and she told me the exact location of her parents’ graves.
“I was surprised to hear that they were buried in Brooklyn, and I decided to visit their gravesites for the first time in my life. Accompanied by my elder son Yehuda, named after my father, we arrived at the cemetery and found the graves after a relatively brief search. Lo and behold, my grandfather’s tombstone bore the name Yerachmiel – just as the Rebbe had written.”