What Mrs. Kaplan Learned From One Woman’s Sacrifice
Motzoei Shabbos Story: Struggling with the demands of shlichus in Tzfas, Mrs. Sara Kaplan found strength in the words of a woman who had made a life-changing sacrifice for Torah.
by COLlive Reporter · COLliveBy Dovid Zaklikowski for Hasidic Archives
When Rabbi Leibel and Sara Kaplan arrived in Tzfas in 1973 as the Rebbe‘s Shluchim to the holy city, they had no family or friends nearby and lacked even the basic necessities an American family was accustomed to. On top of that, they faced Israeli bureaucracy, which they navigated with the heavily accented Hebrew they knew.
The Rebbe had many plans for them: to reestablish the old Chabad community, which had existed for generations but was now in ruins; to build a neighborhood, schools, and other institutions to strengthen Jewish life. In addition, Rabbi Kaplan was given other responsibilities involving Chabad activities throughout the country, which often took him even farther from home.
Slowly, Mrs. Kaplan built a community around her. She led gatherings for women and taught classes. However, her husband’s constant absence on missions was difficult for her. He told her the community’s needs came before personal needs, but she did not always appreciate that sentiment.
She struggled to understand why her husband, a brilliant Torah scholar, would devote so much of his day to activism and the community’s mundane needs. An intellectual woman, she spent many hours discussing with him the need to internalize others’ needs, even when it demanded self-sacrifice. Yet despite these conversations, her own emotional needs remained unmet.
In her work, she assisted a couple who had recently immigrated to Israel and begun their journey toward Jewish observance. It was a difficult situation: the woman was not Jewish and needed to convert, and their son would need to undergo the process as well. But as they looked further into the matter, it turned out that, according to Jewish law, the husband would be unable to marry her.
There may have been ways to find a workaround that would allow them to marry, but their devotion to Torah gave them the fortitude to walk away from their relationship.
The sacrifice shocked Mrs. Kaplan, and she spent much time reflecting on this selfless act in response to a Torah commandment. What would she do? How would she react?
One day, the woman was asked, “How do you feel that the Torah separated you from the love of your life, the father of your son?”
The woman’s response changed Mrs. Kaplan’s life. “This is the power of truth. I felt the strength of that reality.”
The truth may have been difficult, but facing it and recognizing that, in her own case, the community’s needs came first, gave Mrs. Kaplan solace in their mission in Israel.
Find Hasidic Archive’s, latest book Yards of Kindness
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