“A young woman worked at Rami Levi, met and married an Arab…she has returned to Judaism and is now proud to present her newborn son,.”
• Anat Gopstein, in an emotional post on “Am Israel.”
I remember this same girl, we’ll call her “N” about five years ago, wearing a veil when she worked at Rami Levy. She had met a young Arab man, got married and converted to Islam. When I spoke to her then, she didn’t want help, “it will be fine,” she said. I left her my phone number. “It won’t be necessary,” she said. “Everything is going well for me, I even fast on Ramadan.”
I was so distraught. The only things left for me to do were to pray to Heaven, and to support and weep with her poor, broken mother. It was the month of Elul, just before the onset of the High Holidays. We shed many tears at the Kevarim of Tzaddikim, and at the graveside of her grandmother, after whom this young lady is named. How we wept with our prayers, “Ana Hashem Hoshiya Na.”
The day after Yom Kippur I received a phone call, she said, “I want to come home. I want to return to my roots.” Because this call was so unexpected, I needed to find out exactly what happened. “My grandma appeared to me in a dream.” she said. “This is the grandmother to whom I felt so attached, after whom I was named. This dream made me understand that I must return, I can no longer stay.”
Slowly the rehabilitation process began. Walking step by step, hand in hand, returning to the Jewish People. Back to sanity. She used her experience to be able to help a number of girls return to Judaism. Her mother is also assisting other broken parents with the compassionate support and comfort, after having their world devastated the same way as hers.
Many tears were shed on her wedding day. Tears of joy recalling where this girl game from, and where she is today. The woman with the veil has become a fine and virtuous bride.
“It is not thy mercy that you have never been hoped for.”
On Rosh Chodesh of Elul, the month of mercy and Selichot, I receive a phone from “N:” “Because of you, my child will not be called Muhammad.”
