FIREFIGHTER – ADIR MENACHEM MENDEL

Adir Naim is the spokesman for the Israeli fire department in the southern region. He is a firefighter who spent a week fighting the recent fires in Eretz Yisroel. His friends and relatives only know him by his first name, Adir, but he has two additional names: Menachem Mendel. * Between putting out fires and updating the press, Adir told Beis Moshiach about the story of his miraculous birth thirty-six years ago.

One of the spokesmen for the fire and rescue forces in the Negev is Adir Naim. Adir himself is a firefighter and is on track to be promoted to a command position. Like all other Israeli firefighters, he barely had a chance to sleep during the outbreak of fires, which occurred a few weeks ago. What you don’t know and couldn’t guess is that Adir was born from a bracha of the Rebbe. Behind the story of his birth thirty-six years ago is an incredible story which just concluded in recent weeks.

His close friends at work and in the neighborhood of Yishuv Omar only know him as Adir, but his parents and his closest relatives know that he has another two names. Only recently, as he has begun to adopt the path of Torah, has he started using the names Menachem Mendel too.

THE MISSING MALE SON

My parents, Chalfon and Yehudit Naim, live in Kiryat Gat. My father worked for years as a cook in the Chabad yeshiva there. Generations of yeshiva boys grew up on his cooking. He did his work with great love.

Before I was born, my parents had four girls, but they greatly desired a son. My father expressed this hope a number of times to the menahel of the yeshiva at the time, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Wolpo. One day, R’ Wolpo told my father that he was planning a trip to the Rebbe in a few days. He suggested that my father write a letter to the Rebbe with his wish for a son and ask for the Rebbe’s bracha.

My father is a great admirer of the Rebbe but is not a Chassid. He belongs to the knitted yarmulke crowd, so he asked R’ Wolpo to guide him in how to write to the Rebbe. R’ Wolpo advised him to write whatever was on his mind, with words from his heart, and my father did so. He wrote his name and his mother’s name and told the Rebbe that he and my mother yearned for a son. R’ Wolpo took the letter along with the many other letters that people gave him for the Rebbe and submitted them to the Rebbe’s office.

R’ Wolpo spent several days in Crown Heights. One night, after midnight, there was a loud knocking at the door. My parents were frightened but then relaxed when they saw it was talmidim from the Chabad yeshiva whom my father knew.

“Why are you knocking so late at night?” my father asked them.

They smiled and instead of answering, they gave him a telegram which had arrived for him from the Rebbe. My father was very happy to receive an answer. The Rebbe wrote that he should send his t’fillin to be checked by an expert scribe.

My father did not understand what connection there was between his t’fillin and his request for a son, but he has a strong belief in tzaddikim and he sent his t’fillin to be checked.

The expert scribe of Kiryat Gat for many years known to all is R’ Eliyahu Suissa. My father ran to him early in the morning and asked him to check his t’fillin as the Rebbe had instructed. R’ Suissa dropped everything else and began checking the t’fillin.

Within a short time, he called my father and told that he was sorry to say that the t’fillin were pasul. In the section of Kadeish, in the verse, “Va’yomer Moshe el ha’am, zachor es ha’yom ha’zeh,” the word “zachor” was missing. The significance was immediately apparent [zachor means to remember, but could also refer to a male].

My father and R’ Suissa were stunned by the Rebbe’s ruach ha’kodesh. The reason had been found as to why they had not had sons. My father told me that for a long time he was very shaken by this discovery. How could the Rebbe who lived in New York know that the reason why he, in Kiryat Gat, had no sons was because a word from his t’fillin was missing?

My father did not wait but immediately bought new t’fillin from R’ Suissa. Just two months later, my mother discovered she was pregnant. I was born nine months later and many people in Kiryat Gat, not only Chabadnikim, who heard about this extraordinary story, talked about the miracle from the Rebbe.

I was born on Thursday night, 15 Tammuz 5741/1981. Since I had jaundice, my mother stayed with me in the hospital for a week. On Friday, a week after I was born, my parents did not know whether the doctors would release me or keep me under observation for another day. They waited for the examination that would take place that morning. The decision was made to release me.

When my father told R’ Wolpo, R’ Wolpo asked him, “When is the bris?” My father said he had not arranged for a hall and had not invited anyone so he planned to postpone the bris to Sunday. R’ Wolpo told him that if the bris could be done on time, it had to be done so. He offered the food from the yeshiva kitchen and said the yeshiva bachurim would be the guests.

I was brought at twelve o’clock to the yeshiva where the bachurim gathered with their teachers. The bris and the seuda were held and the name my parents chose was Adir, for my maternal grandfather, and Menachem Mendel because it was in the Rebbe’s merit and with his blessing that I was born.

CRISIS OF FAITH

Throughout his life, Adir felt he was different than boys his age:

I was always drawn to the depth within everything. My close friends do not understand why I am so interested in the meaning of life nor why I seek out the mystical.

I attended a Chabad school until third grade and then switched to a government-religious school. In those younger years, everyone called me Mendel, and it was only later that I started using my first name, Adir. Unfortunately, although I was raised religious, when I became of draft age, I left Torah and mitzvos. I struggled at the time with tough questions in emuna for which I did not get answers.

I was drafted into the Air Force and worked as a fireman. While in the army, I visited Poland where I was exposed to the atrocities the Germans perpetrated against the Jewish people. It shook me up. Once again, I had questions – how could G-d allow this to happen? At a certain point, I decided that I was becoming an atheist. I stopped putting on t’fillin and stopped keeping Shabbos and kept my distance from anything that reminded me of tradition. I was released from the army holding the rank of deputy commander of the army fire station in Tzrifin.

Six years passed. My father had a serious heart attack and went in for open-heart surgery. I felt inspired to re-connect and the first thing I decided to do was put on t’fillin. I no longer had t’fillin so I borrowed from a friend. When I put them on I cried. I remember that I was shocked at myself. I did not understand why t’fillin had made me so emotional. However, after a few days, the inspiration wore off and I went back to my old routines. I told myself that I cried because I was shaken up by my father’s illness.

A few years later, a friend suggested that I meet with a rabbi. At first I refused. What did I need a rabbi for? I wasn’t a believer! After much opportuning, I agreed to meet with the rabbi and at the end of our first conversation I was amazed. I promised to keep what he suggested which was to put on t’fillin every day. I had already thought that t’fillin were something that was part of me and would continue to be a part of me all my life. I had been born because of t’fillin, was inspired to teshuva by t’fillin, and now the first mitzva I was being asked to do was t’fillin.

The next day I decided to buy a pair of t’fillin. Where do you buy t’fillin? The only scribe I knew in Kiryat Gat was R’ Eliyahu Suissa. I asked him for the cheapest pair.

“Who are you?” he asked me.

I said, “You might remember me. I’m Mendel Naim, Chalfon’s son.”

“You are the Rebbe’s son, not Chalfon’s son,” he told me. “You should not be using plain t’fillin. I will give you the nicest t’fillin at the price of the cheapest t’fillin.”

Since then, I put on t’fillin every day before I go to work.

When my wife brought home a picture of the Rebbe, I felt a sense of closure. I hung the picture in the study and whenever I go in there, I feel that the Rebbe is watching me and looking after me. But the greatest sense of closure happened when I went for Kaparos in the yishuv where I live, Omer. I did not know that Chabad was running it. When I realized they were Chabad, I told them I have a connection with the Rebbe and I told R’ Menachem Pelman the story of my birth and that I was born with the Rebbe’s bracha.

R’ Pelman smiled and told me that R’ Wolpo is his father-in-law and that he heard my story from him. When R’ Pelman made a bris for his son some time later, he invited me. I was very happy to meet R’ Wolpo there.

At a certain point, R’ Pelman got up and asked me to tell everyone the story of my birth. Since then, I am very connected with Chabad. I feel that the chinuch I got in Chabad until third grade is starting to reawaken inside me. Whenever I travel abroad for work or on a family vacation, I go to the local Chabad House. Now I am waiting for a large framed picture of the Rebbe with a dedication by R’ Wolpo which I will hang in our living room in Omer.

***

Adir, who lives in Omer with his wife and three children, ends his story by saying that he feels, especially in recent years, how the Rebbe is with him and supervises his life. “I care a lot and want very much to help people. If only I had the financial ability to sit all day and help people with their troubles. I feel a great sense of mission in my life, and in hindsight I know that this feeling is what led me to becoming a firefighter, dedicated to saving lives in a hands-on way.”