Last week, I sent out an email to many of my friends with some stories which had been posted on Roving Rabbis.

Below is a response which I just received:

“I was sitting on the beach yesterday, chatting with a neighbor. Her oldest son will be celebrating his Bar-Mitzvah in September. The family belongs to a temple where a new rabbi has just been hired.

"The newly installed rabbi was immediately embroiled in the intrigues and controversies which plague so many communities.

"She and her husband were both getting frustrated with trying to plan an event in the midst of all this turmoil, and were disappointed with the new rabbi’s lack of sensitivity. The conversation turned to the Reform/Conservative/Orthodox labeling thing. I brought up Chabad. She said she thought they were a clannish Orthodox group, and that while she receives literature from Chabad occasionally, she just throws it out. I explained that Chabad was very accepting and helps all Jews be Jewish.

"Then I remembered that I still had your last email on my Blackberry. I opened your email, handed her my Blackberry, and showed her how to scroll. I watched her face as she read it. Her face lit up with a warm smile. When she finished reading, she asked me, 'Is this real?' I told her it was. She said she misunderstood what Chabad was all about, and she would be visiting the Chabad as soon as possible.”

It is stories like this that keep me going. We never know the extent of our actions....

Yesterday we drove down to S. Diego where the final round of Maccabi games were being held. Since we knew a number of the players from the Richmond, VA soccer team, we went straight to the soccer field.

This was the final game and Richmond was loosing 3-1. The air was thick with tension.

The boys from Richmond came over to us and asked us to assist them with the proper blessings to be recited on water and to make sure that we would stick around and lay Tefillin with them after the game.

Well…Richmond scored five more goals and walked off with the gold medal!

Back at the JCC, the boys came over to put on the Tefillin, along with hundreds of other young men.

Over the course of the past week close to 1,000 boys put Tefillin on at the games – a few hundred of them for the first time.

Then it was time for the closing ceremonies and goodbyes. After bidding farewell to all our friends and wishing them a safe trip home, we were off to Riverside to prepare for the next day.

"Hello, Rabbis in Riverside? Geveld!"

"Hi, my name is Chaim, and this is Mendy"

"And I am Shmuel," he replied with a smile.

As we continued to chat, he told us that he was so happy to see Jews in the desert. He said he remembers back in 1969 when he moved from Los Angles to Riverside to get away from the noise and traffic of the big city.

He said there was a lot of anti-Semitism, but it has calmed down some thanks to him and some of his friends. "One of them made such a fuss about getting into the country club that they finally let him in. Now many Jews go there; in fact, I was invited to play mahjong there last Tuesday night."

He told us about his service in the Navy on the DE580. It was the smallest boat in the Navy. They would locate and shoot German submarines. There were exactly ten religious Jewish sailors on the boat who would pray together three times a day but Shmuel wouldn't join, saying that it wasn't his thing.

One day, Schneider was sick and couldn't make the Minyan so Shmuel's bunkmate, a Jewish boy named Silverberg, asked him to come and be the tenth man. He agreed. "That's my Mitzvah, and nobody can take that away. I may not be religious but that was my Minyan."

We continued talking into the afternoon. He had so much to share and never had such an interested audience as us.

At about a quarter to twelve this afternoon, the City of Riverside shook. I heard later there had been an earthquake and I thanked G‑d that I had survived.

While the ground was shaking, Michael was putting on Tefillin. Hashgacha Protis (divine providence) became the word of the day as we discussed the series of events which brought about our meeting.

Basically it goes like this:

Michael had recently been promoted, and could now work from any of his company's locations. Someone was unable to make it to work this morning so Michael was sitting in for him when we chanced by.

The earthquake had disabled the telephone service. Since employs are not allowed to talk on their cellular phones inside, Michael went out to call home and assure everyone that he was ok. When he saw us parading (see my last post for more on that) he decided to do something for G‑d.

Tuesday morning while parading through the mall ('parading' is a word I use for hanging around in Chassidic attire – a surefire invitation for curious people to approach us), we met quite a few people.

First was the security guard who for years had wanted to know what those tassels were and finally summoned up the courage to ask. We told him that they were Tzitzis.

The next guy we met was an Israeli fellow, who owns a few kiosks in the mall. He said he doesn't leave his house in the morning without first putting on his Tefillin. That was definitely nice to hear.

Then we turned down the next corridor and saw a young man on his way out of the mall. He stared at us, we stared at him, and then we all broke out in smiles. We walked outside and sat down in the shade. He told us his life's story, well a short version of it anyway. He was born in New York, moved to Israel as a teen, joined the army a few years later and moved back to the states when he got out. Apparently, there aren't too many black hatted Chassidim walking around Riverside because we were the first obviously Jewish people he saw since he left Israel. He decided to put on Tefillin for the first time since his Bar-Mitzvah, but for this we had to go back inside. He wanted everyone in the mall to see him proudly wearing the Tefillin and saying the Shema.

We sat down and soaked in the hustle and bustle of the busy mall. As we were leaving, a girl came over to us and said, "excuse me, are you Jewish?" For a second I was shocked! Hey, that's my line, copyrighted by Chabad!? Then she continued, telling us that she lives in Riverside, and that there is no Judaism here for her or her boyfriend. She needed to do something to feel Jewish; she just couldn't find that Jewish spark. Well, what better Jewish spark than the flame of the candles Friday night? So, after explaining what the candles were, how and when to light them, she made a resolution right then and there to light candles every Friday night. She also accepted our invitation for her and her boyfriend to join us for Shabbat.

Truth is stranger than fiction…

Before starting my tour in California this week, I spent the past Shabbat in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Over Shabbat, I got to know a Jew from LA by the name of Avraham Reiss.

Avraham, it turns out, was a student in the Lubavitcher Yeshiva over 50 years ago, back when the Yeshiva was on the corner of Bedford Ave. and Dean Street in Brooklyn.

In the early 50s, Avraham spent a summer knocking on doors in Upstate New York. His itinerary included Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany. On Tishah B'Av (a fast day when we mourn the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem), he and his friend knocked on the door of a home of a Jewish family. From the doorway, they were able to see the family seated around the table eating ham sandwiches. They were invited in and sat with the family for a few hours speaking about all kinds of things ranging from sports to politics to Torah.

The inspiration of their encounter lead the family to find out more about their Jewish heritage. Today the father is a rabbi of an Orthodox shul, and all of the kids are living fully Jewish lives.

With that inspiration in mind, Riverside California, here I come!

Chaim Litvin