Rabbi Yecheskel Menache’s efforts to bring the geulah, two halachos at a time

 

 

M. Brejt

 

Rabbi Yecheskel Menache is a collector.

He doesn’t collect rare manuscripts or antique vases. Yet he gathers up his treasures with the same excitement and enthusiasm as any treasure hunter.

And his wares are far more precious.

Rabbi Menache collects stories of yeshuos that come from shmiras halashon.

To date, he has collected over 1,300 stories, and he keeps track of them all. There are over 900 shidduchim stories, 100 stories about couples who were blessed with children, and 80 stories having to do with money. He knows which stories are a result of which sefer and how long ago each story took place.

And while the collector hidden in his dusty rooms may be eager to show you his treasure, Rabbi Menache’s excitement exceeds his. He just can’t wait to tell you another story.

Klal Yisrael is still waiting for the greatest yeshuah of all. As we enter the Three Weeks, we hope and daven that these stories, and the inspiration we glean from them, are a precursor to the biggest story, yet to come.

 

The letter that changed everything

 

 

It all started the day Rabbi Menache’s high-school daughter came home with a letter.

Written by Rebbetzin Batsheva Kanievsky, the letter promised incredible brachos for those who followed its instructions.

Rabbi Menache was stunned when he read it. “Really? All those yeshuos for learning two halachos a day? People have to know about this!”

Part of the impact for Rabbi Menache came from knowing the greatness of Rav Yehuda Segal, who is quoted in the letter. “Rav Steipler called Rav Yehuda Zev Segal the amud hatefillah of the generation,” he explains.

“Although I’d learned the halachos of shmiras halashon many times over the years, especially as a bachur, this was the first time I heard the concept that the halachos should be learned daily. But it makes sense. It’s not like hilchos Shabbos, which you learn once well and then review occasionally. The only way to stop yourself from speaking lashon hara is to review the halachos consistently. The mouth is always moving, and we have to move with it.”

Once he read that letter, there was no turning back. The gears of a revolution were set into motion.

 

 

One story at a time

 

 

As a rebbe in the Cheder, that was Rabbi Menache’s first stop. He started by encouraging the boys to learn two halachos a day.

“I also started telling people I knew about this promise, figuring adults could also benefit. There was a man in my shul who was struggling to find a shidduch for his daughter, and I suggested he learn A Daily Companion with his daughter. What did he have to lose?”

Sure enough, the man’s daughter was engaged four months later—exactly the length of time it takes to finish the cycle. He told Rabbi Menache, “There’s no question it’s from learning the halachos of shmiras halashon. It made us better people.”

Energized by the result, Rabbi Menache upped his efforts in publicizing the zechus of learning hilchos shmiras halashon. He started receiving phone call after phone call, story after story. The stories spanned numerous topics but all carried the same theme: Learning the halachos is a segulah for yeshuos.

Then his wife came to him with a complaint. “Everyone else is getting engaged, but look at us. We still have three children in shidduchim. What’s going on?”

Rabbi Menache smiled. “We both need to learn it.”

He promised his wife a piece of jewelry if nothing happened, but “within two months, one son got engaged. Three weeks later, another son got engaged. Then, six weeks after that, just a few days before my son’s wedding, a man in my school tells me has a shidduch for my daughter. Before my first son even got married, my daughter was engaged.”

The story made waves, and even more people chose to take on the commitment of learning two halachos a day. But it doesn’t end there.

Years later, a bachur approached Rabbi Menache, telling him he needed a shidduch. Rabbi Menache encouraged him as he had encouraged so many others. Twenty-seven days later, the bachur’s chavrusa in shmiras halashon got engaged to Rabbi Menache’s daughter—the one who years earlier had brought home the letter that so inspired her father.

At the vort, the first bachur approached Rabbi Menache. “It worked for him and not for me?” he said.

“Don’t worry,” Rabbi Menache responded.

Forty days later, the bachur was engaged.

 

Whatever it takes

 

 

At a wedding, Rabbi Menache will walk over to people he doesn’t even know and ask if they heard of this segulah. He’ll stop people on the street or schmooze with them in Gourmet Glatt. After all, if you had an amazing business deal, a fantastic product that promised to be life-changing, wouldn’t you tell everyone you could about it?

Rabbi Menache knows he has something much better.

You would think Rabbi Menache is an outgoing people person, but he admits that he is anything but. “My teva is to be a shy person. In the beginning, I was embarrassed to approach people and tell them about this segulah. In fact, I recently bumped into a man I was in kollel with, and he said the biggest nes of the whole story is the fact that I became a public figure!” Rabbi Menache chuckles. “It’s just not me.”

He expected arguments and disdain but instead found almost overwhelming support. The positive results of people seeing yeshuos spurred him onward.

At one point, Rabbi Menache reached out to Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky for guidance. At the time, he had collected 200 stories of yeshuos.

“I want to be mechazek people, but I don’t have a lot of time,” he told the Rosh Yeshivah. “I’m a rebbe in the morning and I teach in the afternoon, and I also have my own learning to do. I have three spare hours for learning. How much time should I take away from my learning to be mechazek people?”

Rav Shmuel’s answer shocked him. “Two hours a day.”

“That also gave me chizuk to talk to strangers. I still get embarrassed sometimes, but I do it anyway, just jumping right in.

“A woman once told me that she saw me at a wedding, encouraging strangers to learn A Daily Companion, and that inspired her to start encouraging others. Thinking back to that gives me chizuk.”

 

 

 

A virtuous cycle

 

 

Most of the stories Rabbi Menache has collected are from perfect strangers. “Just today, I got a call from a woman who said she and her husband met me on 14th Street last year. They started learning A Daily Companion and were blessed with a child.”

He would tell his stories to his students, and soon one boy suggested he create a hotline for his stories. “Ill take care of it, Rabbi Menache!” he said.

This student also made CDs out of Rabbi Menache’s stories, and slowly, the word spread. People reached out to Rabbi Menache not just with stories but with the desire to get involved in his zechus.

“I’m giving you $5,000,” said one donor. “Advertise about this yeshuah.”

So he advertised, and more stories came his way. Soon the CDs turned into a USB, and today Rabbi Menache is invited to speak regularly for schools and events. Each gathering is just another opportunity, and inevitably, yeshuos follow.

Donors also offered him books, and today there are always books and USBs in Rabbi Menache’s mailbox. Any person he encourages to learn the halachos is invited to pick up a copy of A Daily Companion from his mailbox.

 

Heavenly encounters

 

Many people read Rebbetzin Kanievsky’s letter and did nothing. Rabbi Menache read it and started a revolution. What fueled his passion?

Much of Rabbi Menache’s desire to help people grow traces back to his family.

“I grew up in a Sephardi home—my father’s from Egypt and my mother is from Morocco—and we were brought up with ruchniyus, with simple emunah. Everything was Hashem, Hashem, Hashem.”

Rabbi Menache also remembers seeing his grandmother, who lived until over 100, sitting on a bed and davening. “She didn’t realize I was there, and she just started saying, ‘Hashem, Hashem,’ really feeling that Hashem was right there in the room with her.

“My grandmother was a very special person. There’s actually a story in our family back when she lived in Egypt of the time she met Eliyahu Hanavi.”

It was the night before Shivah Asar B’Tammuz, and she was not well enough to fast the next day. While she slept, she dreamed that Eliyahu Hanavi came to her and said, “Tomorrow you will feed a hungry man, and it will be as if you fasted.”

The next day, there was a banging on the front door. Rabbi Menache’s grandmother opened it to an Arab man, who begged, “Please give me something to eat! I’m so hungry!”

She invited him in and placed a piece of fish with bones in front of him. She left the room and came back 20 minutes later to see the man sitting in front of an empty plate. It was impossible to eat such a piece of fish without leaving over any bones, and she started to shake, remembering her dream.

She brought out another piece of fish and left the room again. When she came back a little while later, she saw the plate empty and the man gone. She ran outside and asked her neighbor who had been sitting outside all morning, “Did you see that Arab man?”

Her neighbor shook her head, and she realized it must have been Eliyahu Hanavi.

But the connection with Eliyahu Hanvi didn’t end there. “When my mother was expecting me, she also saw Eliyahu Hanavi in a dream. She told me years later that she asked him for something, which later came true, and that was the reason she gave me my second name, Eliyahu.”

 

Changing the world

 

 

As a young man, Rabbi Menache was a rebbe, and although he loved what he did, he sometimes felt it wasn’t enough.

“How am I going to change the world?” he asked a colleague. Twenty-five student every year—that’s not enough to change the world!”

“But Hashem was good to me, and I started being involved in the Lakewood Cheder, where I see close to a thousand kids a year and have the opportunity to be mechazek them. And then Hashem sent me the method through which I can change the world.

“It’s really Hashem’s nissim that give me the strength,” Rabbi Menache asserts. “Because He shows me, shows us, just how powerful it is to be careful with shmiras halashon, we are inspired to learn it. But there are so many benefits besides the yeshuah. We become happier people, and we’re better at being dan l’kaf zechus.”

He shares a story that still makes him tremble every time he thinks about it. “Around 50, 60 years ago, Rav Moshe Feinstein told Rav Simcha Bunim Cohen that Mashiach was about to come that day, but the only reason he couldn’t come was because there were two groups fighting. Rav Simcha Bunim asked Rav Moshe to tell him who they were, not for lashon hara but so he could try to make shalom. Rav Simcha Bunim called Rav Nosson Wachtfogel and told him the story, and Rav Nosson reached out to them to get them to stop fighting. Sadly, they were so entrenched in their fighting, they wouldn’t stop, even to bring the geulah.

“Rav Moshe then told Rav Simcha Bunim that even if they made up, at that moment it was too late, as the zman for Mashiach has passed. We would have to wait for the next one.

“They missed out on their chance because of machlokes and lashon hara,” Rabbi Menache concludes. “We can’t miss it again… The Chafetz Chaim writes that the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed because of sinas chinam and the only way it will be rebuilt is if we work on that. Rav Elya Brudny announced that by learning hilchos shmiras halashon, we will bring the geulah.

“We can all do it.”

 

 

 

Common questions that Rabbi Menache receives

 

 

Q: I learned A Daily Companion for four months and I still didn’t get a yeshuah. Why?

A: It does happen, which is why I say the segulah has a 97-percent success rate, not 100. It can also take some time. I know many people who got engaged after a year of learning hilchos shmiras halashon.

Finally, how are you learning it? It’s important that both people who are learning it have their own copy and that they are really concentrating. It’s the only way to really know the halachos.

Q: Can I learn for a yeshuah for more than one thing?

A: I have a friend Kalman Schreiber—he gave me permission to use his name—whose friend came to him saying he’s breaking, he needs four major yeshuos, what should he do?

He told him, “I have a friend Rabbi Menache, who encourages people to learn shimras halashon. Why don’t you try it?”

Later, Kalman Schreiber came to me and told me that his friend started learning A Daily Companion and within 45 days, his life turned around.

People also dedicate each cycle as a zechus for something else. I know some people who dedicate the first cycle for Mashiach and then the other ones for a different yeshuah.

A: Why do I need to learn A Daily Companion? I want to learn the original sefer.

A: Unless you speak Hebrew very well, it’s hard to really get the full benefits unless you learn it in English. The point isn’t just to read it; the point is to make you change. There are many English sefarim out there. Some people learn A Daily Companion and then, when they feel they need more chizuk, they switch to another English sefer.

 

 

When speaking to Rabbi Menache, story after story pours out. Here is a sampling:

 

• Rav Aharon Gabioff developed terrible blisters on his feet and tongue. For five years, he suffered in agony. Nothing he tried could make it go away. Then he started learning two halachos a day, and the blisters on his tongue disappeared. Shortly afterward, the blisters on his feet were gone. It’s been 22 years, and they never came back.
• A man was diagnosed with alopecia. He started learning A Daily Companion. Four months later, the doctors started him on a new trial, and today he has a full head of hair.
• A boy was crossing the street when a car ran him over, then dragged him a full block while trapped under the wheels. Anyone who saw it was shuddering, but the boy rolled out from under the car with just a few scratches. Just the day before, his mother had finished and restarted A Daily Companion.
• A man owed over $18,000 in state taxes. Shortly after starting A Daily Companion, he called up the IRA, and the woman on the phone did some work and then told him his tax bill had been reduced to about $2,400. He decided to try again and called back, asking for the same woman. This time, she managed to get his bill down to zero.
• Rabbi Menache went to Dr. Tarlow one Motzaei Shabbos with my wife for stitches, and while there, he shared some stories. Dr. Tarlow got inspired to start learning A Daily Companion, and six weeks later, he called Rabbi Menache and shared that his daughter was engaged.

Two years later, he called again and said, “I want you to know, I’m happier about the fact that I started learning shmiras halashon than I am that my daughter got engaged and married. I’m a whole new person!”

• A young girl was in a coma for a few months, and the doctors were losing hope. One afternoon, the father was tempted to pick up the phone to call a friend and share something negative. Then he decided to hold back, and he told Hashem, “We know that when we hold ourselves back, no angel can imagine the reward. Hashem, I closed my mouth; please open the mouth of my daughter.”

A few minutes later, his wife called him, crying. “She woke up and she’s crying! Come quickly!”

• A school asked Rabbi Menache to come speak to the staff. Sefarim were distributed, and many staff members started learning the halachos. Within 40 days, several older single staff members were engaged.
• A man was married for several years without children. One day, he went around to the men in his chaburah and got 33 of them to promise to learn A Daily Companion. Within a year, he had a child.