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Reb Moshe Hochberg stood at the door at the small event we arranged looking like the sweet Israeli avreich, the sort who walks with a Gal-Paz bag and tells you about his Taharos kollel in Kiryat Sefer, or whatever.
As a talmid of Rav Dovid Soloveitchik, where his father still learns, he got excited whenever an alumnus of that yeshiva came in, where did you sit, what years? As if life was regular. As if he doesn’t see images of an inferno every time he closes his eyes.
A year ago, he was on top of the world, a talented, delightful, young rosh yeshiva of a mossad for teenagers at risk. He was great at it.
He was a good fund-raiser too, and he took care of his boys. Before Yom Tov last year, he treated them to new suits, and he gave them checks to use. He make a mistake then. A mistake he’ll never forget. He gave the boys blank checks to use at the store.
One confused young man saw an opportunity. The check didn’t have much coverage, but a signed check can be used for security for a loan. The teenager hurried to borrow money, several hundred thousand shekels, then disappeared. No suit, no check, no bochur.
Just the Mafia. A collection of nasty Arabs and Russians, some cruel, dangerous people: young Reb Moshe H. with the bright eyes and plans for his teenage talmidim was no match for them.
He insisted that he hadn’t borrowed the money from them, and they showed him the check. He was responsible, they said. He hadn’t any money, he told them.
That’s when life as he knew it ended.
The first nightmare was when they took him in, grabbing him off the street and taking him with them. He endured a beating so bad, he recalls, that he didn’t believe it was possible to survive.
They finally left him, but they’d succeeded in beating the energy, light and optimism out of the young talmid chacham.
But that was nothing compared to what came next.
He scrambled to get them some money, but not fast enough. They came after his sweet little nine year old daughter and broke her. They poured acid on her. They sent home a damaged little person.
Reb Moshe’s voice cracks, and then he is unable to speak at all. “You have no idea what its like to see your child beaten up, look at you and ask why it happened, what she did wrong?”
Reb Moshe needs to pay them off, for once and for all. His next payment is due in two weeks, and they are threatening his wife this time. For one hundred thousand dollars, he can be back home, with his family
This is his story. A year ago, he was a successful young man, a star, they called him. A miracle worker, people said. Now, he needs a miracle.
Let’s do this. Let’s get Reb Moshe back home, let’s end this dark period for him so that he and his family can start living again, by clicking here: https://pay.banquest.com/hatznef
Yisroel Besser
Bshem Rav Velvel Soloveitchik, Rav Mattisyahu Hochberger, Rav Binyomin Finkel, along with Rav Aron Tabak and Rav Shmuel Chaim Reidel
