Operation Breslav

This is a crazy story. It seems that, for some reason, Rabbi Nachman of Breslav left a command in his writings that his followers should always make sure that his descendants stay within the hassidic movement.

It seems that it has recently been discovered that all his descendants have continued living in the Ukraine and have all intermarried with non-Jews.

Some Breslavers are working hard and spending a lot of money in bribes to try to get them to agree to come to Israel, to become religious, and ultimately "lehitbraslev" (a word I just made up that would mean "to become breslav").

Ynetnews has the strange story, that sounds like it is right out of some fiction novel. Here is an excerpt of the story.

Rabbi Barzel immediately boarded the first flight to Tashkent and together with Pinto looked through the records of the Uzbekistani Ministry of the Interior. The two managed to trace Sarah Leah and Raizel Zerikovsky through their maiden names. "We reached Raizel's address," Rabbi Pinto relates. "We knocked on the door, which was crumbling down and entered a particularly shabby wooden house. A one and half bedroom apartment with primitive toilets and a shower in the kitchen. Something truly awful, like one would imagine a house from 300 years ago."

The two rabbis took Raizel to a local hotel to get away from the house. The following day they reached her sister Leah and found a great treasure in her house. "As we were talking we found a dusty old library," Pinto relates. "And after snooping around found loads of ancient Breslov books that their father had brought with him when he fled the Ukraine. They have not been touched since. First editions, unbelievable materials! They are worth tens of thousands of dollars."

The rabbis then launched a series of meetings to persuade the sisters, who had virtually no knowledge of Judaism, to leave everything and move to Israel. Hitting a note with their childhood memories, they managed to convince the women to make aliyah, but only on the condition that their daughters came too.

Ira, 25, Leah's daughter, is married to a local gentile called Sasha and the couple are parents to a boy and a girl. Raizel has two girls: Ella, a 28-year-old in the process of a divorce from Andrei, a 50-year-old gentile and native of Armenia; and Paina, 20, whom the rabbis convinced to cancel her engagement to a local man (helped by the fact they arranged the groom with a respected job and some funds).

Paina was flown to visit Nachman of Breslov's grave in Uman and eventually decided to move to Israel after considerable persuasion. She now attends a school for the newly religious in Jerusalem. "I'm happy I found my true place and true life," she says. One mission accomplished.