In this column, we highlight small and not-so-small acts of kindness that happen each and every single day.
There was high drama on the Yamim Noraim at a shul in Brooklyn some years ago.
At one Yom Kippur service at the Young Israel Beth El of Borough Park—one of the few Modern Orthodox congregations in the largely Chareidi section of central Brooklyn—the back-and-forth bidding for the honor of pesichah (opening the Torah ark) during Neilah, the final tefillah of Yom Kippur, came down to two men.
Unlike the auctioning at other Shabbat and yom tov services, where various kebudim (honors) like aliyot and reading of Maftir are open for bidding, at Neilah—the most solemn tefillah on the most solemn day of the year—it’s only pesichah.
The winning bidders make good on their pledges, usually by sending in a check, following that Shabbat or chag. The auctions take place on the honor system; a majority of the bidders pay what they had indicated they would.
That Yom Kippur, before the heavenly gates closed, the two men at the Young Israel Beth El minyan sitting at tables at opposite ends of the social hall kept shouting out their bids for pesichah.
The bidding began at $100. Then doubled. Then kept rising. Other bidders quickly dropped out.
Soon, the bids exceeded $1,000, a high amount for the congregants of largely modest means. The winning bids for most kebudim at the shul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur rarely exceed a few hundred dollars.
Heshy Friedman, the minyan’s gabbai who runs the service and conducts the auction, says he was shocked.
The congregants also reacted with surprise. “The bidding never was like this.”
One of the bidders for Neilah, Shimon Cohen (not his real name), was in the jewelry business and had bought pesichah for himself for “many years” . . . “for everything—health, prosperity.” His father also had the tradition of buying pesichah Neilah.
For Cohen, opening the ark at Neilah was a strong, meaningful chazakah, an established act to which he looked forward. Sometimes, when another man had the tradition of purchasing pesichah at the minyan in the Young Israel Beth El social hall, Cohen would buy it, “for a fair price,” upstairs at the minyan in the main sanctuary. “He had health issues, and wanted it for himself,” Friedman says.
Cohen’s competitor in the bidding was Avram and Sarah Goldberg (also not their real names), who did not have Cohen’s financial resources.
Friedman did not ask the Goldbergs why they were making a bid clearly beyond their means. But he could guess; the couple was childless after a decade of marriage.
Was it hard to give up his accustomed Neilah? “It’s never hard to do a mitzvah,” Cohen says.
Friedman’s guess was correct. He says Sarah, who was sitting across from her husband next to a makeshift mechitzah in the shul’s social hall, had learned that pesichah Neilah was a segulah for giving birth. Sarah had told Avram, from across the mechitzah, to get pesichah Neilah that day, no matter the amount. “You have to buy it.”
Segulot are especially popular in the Chassidic and Sephardic communities as fortune-improving spiritual omens frequently employed when facing poverty, singlehood, health challenges or—like Avram and Sarah—infertility. In kabbalistic thought, there is a correlation between someone opening the ark and G-d opening a woman’s womb. Other segulot for childbirth include buying and lending sefarim to other people, performing the mitzvah of shiluach hakan (sending a mother bird away from her nest), and lighting Shabbat candles early on Fridays.
Sarah believed that pesichah Neilah would be efficacious for her and her husband.
Friedman, a college professor who has served as a gabbai at the synagogue for more than twenty years, approached Cohen and explained why Avram was probably raising the stakes. “These people are going to keep bidding.”
“I’ll buy it for them,” Cohen said.
Friedman told Avram what Cohen had said. “You can stop bidding,” Friedman told him. He was just surprised.
What would he do if the bidding had exceeded his pre-determined limit of a few hundred dollars? “They were going to keep going, no matter what,” Friedman says.
Cohen’s final bid was $1,800. He “won” the auction; then he gave the honor to Avram, who opened the ark at the beginning of Chazarat HaShatz and closed it at the end of the service, after the declaration of l’shanah haba b’Yerushalayim (next year in Jerusalem).
Why did Cohen surrender the honor that he had purchased?
“I wanted to participate in the mitzvah [of helping the couple have a child],” he says. Pesichah Neilah “is a segulah for a child.”
Was it hard to give up his accustomed Neilah?
“It’s never hard to do a mitzvah,” Cohen says.
The Goldbergs, who gave the shul “something extra,” were “thankful” to Cohen, he says.
Cohen’s act was selfless, putting the Goldbergs’ needs before his own, Friedman says. “The key [to receiving G-d’s blessings] is being kind to people. You can’t bribe G-d. You have to show kindness.”
After Neilah, Cohen and the Goldbergs went home to break their fasts.
The week after Yom Kippur, Cohen fulfilled his pesichah Neilah pledge. He brought Friedman the $1,800 in cash, and Friedman took it right to the bank, depositing the funds in the synagogue’s account.
And on Yom Kippur the following year, Cohen davened again, as usual, at Young Israel Beth El. He sat in his accustomed seat, across the social hall from Avram, who was sitting, like the previous year, across the mechitzah from his wife.
That year on Yom Kippur, Cohen—his health fine—bought pesichah, unchallenged.
That year, Sarah did not urge her husband to bid for pesichah.
That year, Sarah was holding the couple’s three-month-old daughter.
Steve Lipman is a frequent contributor to Jewish Action. This column is dedicated l’ilui nishmat Alta Sara Etel bat Alter Yechiel Mechel.
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