From frozen Russia to a gas station in Israel – a story of hope that never went out.
October 2023 — just weeks after the horrific events of October 7, a young Chabad couple, Rabbi Shneor and Dini Raskin, emissaries of the Rebbe in the Israeli town of Alfei Menashe, set out to visit a family whose son, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, was among the hostages in Gaza.
It’s hard to imagine a more painful visit: parents who can’t eat, can’t sleep, and spend every waking moment worrying about their child. To them, it doesn’t matter how old he is — he’s their entire world. The Raskins asked themselves what they could possibly say to parents like these that hadn’t already been said. They didn’t want to add to their pain or sadness; they came to comfort and strengthen them, yet felt utterly helpless — after all, who has experience with something like this?
Then Rabbi Raskin remembered a story about Chabad chassidim in Russia.
After World War II, there was a brief, rare opportunity to leave the Soviet Union. Polish citizens who had fled into its territory during the war were allowed to return home. Many Jews from Russia took advantage of that opening, using forged papers and pretending to be Polish in order to escape the Soviet regime. Among them were a young couple, Berel and Chana Gurvich, who had been married less than a year and longed to reach the free world. They were given false identities, but while Chana received her Polish documents, her husband was told he would get his at a later stop along the way.
The plan fell apart. When their train reached the border city of Lvov, Soviet border guards ordered all passengers heading for Poland to disembark for inspection. Berel’s situation was desperate — without documents, he faced charges of trying to cross the border illegally.
The young couple was torn by an agonizing choice: should Chana go on to freedom, knowing it would mean separation from her husband? During questioning, Berel insisted he was a Polish citizen who had lost his papers. By sheer luck, the inspection didn’t expose him as Russian, sparing him a severe sentence, though he was told he would be tried for not having identification.
For Chana, the moment of parting was unbearable. Her friends had to drag her onto the train by force, as her sobs broke everyone’s heart. She continued on to Poland, then to a DP camp in Germany, and eventually to Paris. There she lived with her sister and brother-in-law and supported herself by sewing in a clothing shop. Her days were filled with tears; the worry for her husband robbed her of sleep.
The Hope That Never Faded
In those dark and lonely days, there was one small ray of light that kept Chana going — words spoken each morning by her neighbor, Rabbi Yitzchak Goldin, a fellow Chabad chassid she met on her way to work.
“Chana,” he would tell her gently, “you have nothing to worry about. I’m telling you — your husband will come back.”
Chana clung to those words like a drowning person grasping a straw. Every morning she looked forward to that brief encounter, timing her walk so she could see him and hear his reassurance. But the days turned into weeks, then months, with no sign of her husband.
At one point, Chana made up her mind to return to the Soviet Union and search for him herself. Before doing so, she wrote to the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, who was then living in New York, asking for his blessing. The Rebbe’s reply was brief but firm: “It is better that he come to you than that you go to him.”
Those words gave her strength. Chana stayed in Paris, holding on to hope and praying that somehow her husband would find his way back to her.
Meanwhile, back in Russia, Berel was put on trial for not having identification papers and was sentenced to two years in prison. About a year and a half after the painful separation from his wife, a miracle occurred. The Polish government formally complained to its Soviet counterpart that not all of its citizens who had fled during the war had been allowed to return home. As a result, the border was reopened for eight weeks, giving undocumented “Poles” a chance to leave the Soviet Union.
One day, the prison commander called Berel in, asked him for his personal details, and ordered him to come along. Berel was taken to the border city of Brisk, and to his astonishment, was told simply: “Cross the border.”
Once in Poland, Berel began searching for other Chabad chassidim. He wandered from place to place until he met a religious Jew who asked, “You’re looking for a Chabad chassid? I know one — in Paris! His name is Itche Goldin.”
Berel immediately sent a telegram to the address he was given. He had just enough money to write four words: “Berel Gurvich. Alive in Poland.”
When the message reached Paris, the joy that filled the building was indescribable. Itche Goldin — the same man who had promised the lonely, weeping woman that her husband would return — was now the messenger bringing her the miraculous news.
(Sichat Hashavua issue no. 1591.)
From the Tunnels of Gaza to the Light of Hope
It was with this story in mind that Rabbi and Mrs. Raskin visited the Gilboa-Dalal family — a visit filled with hugs, with comforting words, and with unwavering faith that Guy would come home. They repeated it again and again, and they truly believed it. Their presence gave the parents strength — the strength to rise from grief and despair, and to go on living with hope.
At times, the Raskins had to help with even the simplest things. After all, who feels like going grocery shopping when your son is trapped in Hamas tunnels? Who can cook, or even eat? They gently encouraged friends and neighbors to visit, to bring food, to make sure the family ate — and to keep lifting them up again and again.
Later, Rabbi Raskin received a message from a woman named Miri Forest. She wanted to give the Gilboa-Dalal parents a dollar that she had once received from the Rebbe — but as a loan, until Guy returned home. On that dollar were the words “Tzeischem Leshalom” — “Go in peace.”
These dollars were distributed by the Rebbe either at Yechidus Klalios (general audiences) or during the “Farewell Gathering” after Chanukah, when guests from around the world were preparing to return home. The Rebbe would speak to them, bless them with a safe journey, and pray that they return home in peace. One woman who received such a dollar wrote that she had been there at that very gathering — when the Rebbe blessed everyone, “Go in peace and return in peace.” And that, she said, was the same hope for Guy — that he too would “go in peace and return home in peace.”
What made the moment even more extraordinary was what happened next. When Miri met Mrs. Gilboa-Dalal at a gas station to hand her the dollar and explain its meaning, another woman standing nearby overheard the conversation and suddenly said, “I have a Rebbe dollar too — I keep it in my purse!”
She went on to tell them that years earlier, she had asked the Rebbe for a blessing for children. The Rebbe had handed her a dollar — and soon after, she gave birth to a child. Ever since then, she lends that same dollar to women struggling with infertility — and showed them photos of thirty babies born thanks to that very dollar.
That Rebbe dollar — and the blessing that came with it — gave the Gilboa-Dalal family the strength to hold on, to endure the unbearable, until they finally merited to see their son come home.
Today, as we begin reading Parshat Bereishit — the very first portion of the Torah — we are reminded of the Rebbe’s powerful message about faith and creation. The Torah begins with the story of the world’s beginning, and hidden within it is a message about our own personal beginnings.
In every kind of work or spiritual effort, the Rebbe wrote, the first step — the “Bereishit,” the beginning — is to remember that God created both the heavens (spiritual) and the earth (physical). He is the Creator of all things, yet He desires that His work be carried out through human beings — His messengers — who bring His will into the world.
At the start of creation, “the earth was chaotic and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.” At the beginning of every sacred effort, a person may feel that everything is confusion and darkness, that it’s impossible to build something meaningful. But the Torah immediately says, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”
From that moment, order and life began to form — plants, animals, and finally, human beings — the pinnacle of creation. The Rebbe explained that this is how it works in every aspect of life: when a person stands firm in their resolve to do what’s right, even the darkest place can suddenly become filled with light.
When we face difficulties — moments that can discourage or break us — the Torah calls out: “In the beginning, God created!” Even when things look like chaos and darkness, we must remember that just as the world began in confusion and emptiness, yet through God’s word light appeared, so too can light emerge from our darkest times.
And so, after two long years of chaos, pain, and the darkness of the tunnels — we, too, have finally seen great light.
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