Things were spinning out of control. Baruch took a deep breath. Remember the Muncaczer passport. Remember Baruch Mordechai. Remember the Klausenberger Rebbe.
Baruch started walking back to Mr. Shpeiter’s house. He would think there. Baruch walked down the stairs in the back of the house. He looked mournfully at the crock pot. It was going to be okay. He forced a smile. Thank You. This seems really tough, but You know this is best for me. A noise startled him. He turned around, and fluttering to the ground was another note. Baruch looked across the room and saw drawers. Baruch slowly opened them, and saw… an extra pipe! Wait, he thought, this could fix the Time Machine!
He grabbed the pipe and connected the crock pot to the dangling, disconnected pipe… the crock pot bubbled back to life! But the mysteries were not solved at all. Where was Mr. Shpeiter, and who was that man, aaaand…. Was he safe? He wanted to press the button and go back in time, but with that AMELEK10 guy still at large, maybe it wasn’t safe. Baruch sighed. But wait! Under the crock pot. Another letter! Who was leaving these?
Anyway, he read: Rav Yankel Galinsky zatzal was sent to Siberia for teaching Torah. One night when he was sleeping in the prisoners’ barracks, a noise woke him up. He looked and saw a tall man in the corner. The man looked around worried, put something on his shirt and marched back and forth. Then he quickly took it off and dashed back into bed. Hmmmm…. The next morning Reb Yankel asked the man what he was doing. After assuring himself that Reb Yankel wasn’t from the KGB, the man explained. “Before I came here, I was a general in the Latvian army. They torture me here because of that and because I’m big and strong. But every night, I put on a pin from my days in the army, and I march a bit, to remind me, ‘I am not a prisoner. I am a general!'” Reb Yankel would relate this story and remark, “The yetzer hara bothers us, and tells us lots of things that are not true about who we are. We need to look at our uniform, our tzitzis or yarmulke etc. and remember, we are not his prisoners! We are generals! We. Are. Yidden!
Baruch looked down at his tzitzis. You know what he needed to do? He needed to… daven. How else would he find his way? He went to the shelf near Mr. Shpeiter’s workbench and took down a Tehillim. He was crying before he even found the chapter he wanted to say. He whispered, Hashem, please help me find the right way to go! Help me defeat AMALEK10! Help me! Help me…
Continued next week…
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 29.