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The Ramban writes about the mitzvah to listen to our Torah Sages: “Its intention is that in accordance with their opinion does Hashem give us the Torah. Even if it is in your eyes like replacing the right with the left – and all the more so, when they say about the right that it is right – you must think that the Spirit of G-d is upon them ... ‘He will not leave His pious ones, they will always be protected,’ from erring and from stumbling. And the language of the Sifrei is: ‘Even if they show to your eyes about the right that it is the left and the left that it is the right, nevertheless, listen to them.’” 

From all over Europe, thousands of Yidden would come to visit the holy Rebbe of Rizhin, Rav Yisroel Friedman zt”l. For a young boy named Pesach, an orphan who had been taken in by the Rebbe’s family, it was an amazing sight of which he never tired of observing. Each and every day, so many people, with so many kinds of troubles, would come to the Rebbe in the hopes of receiving a blessing for a better future. “The Rizhiner is a tzadik,” he was told. “All these people come to him for a blessing, and when he gives it, he can see what will happen to them many years from now.”

The following story was retold recently at a pidyon ha’ben by Rav Nissan Kaplan shlita, the well-known maggid shiur in the Mirrer Yeshiva, who was discussing the effect that kiddush Hashem has on a Jew, even a tiny baby. He recalled how on a recent trip to America during the summer, he was scheduled to return from Newark Airport on Thursday at 3:30 p.m., arriving Friday morning in Ben Gurion Airport at 7:00 a.m. It was the summer, and since sunset on Friday afternoon in Israel was at 7:15 p.m., he felt he had a reasonable amount of time to make it home before Shabbos.

Rashi writes as follows: “These are the journeys of Bnei Yisrael... Why are these (42) journeys written here? To inform us of the chesed (kindness) of the Omnipresent, for although He issued a decree to move them about and make them wander in the desert...you will find that throughout the 38 years they made only 20 journeys.” My good friend Rabbi Dovid Gurwitz, shlita, showed me something amazing. Each one of the 42 journeys that Bnei Yisrael made are preceded and succeeded with the words “vayisu…vayachanu, they journeyed...and they camped.” The gematria of vayisu is 152, and vayachanu is 80. The difference is 72: the value of the word chesed, kindness!

One of the leading chasidic rebbes in pre-war Europe was R’ Avraham Mordechai Alter, zt”l, also known as the Imrei Emes, the third Rebbe of the dynasty of Ger. The Imrei Emes held this position from 1905 until his death in 1948. He was one of the founders of the Agudas Yisroel in Poland and was influential in establishing a network of Jewish schools there. It is claimed that at one time he led over 200,000 chasidim. During World War II, R’ Avraham Mordechai was a prime target of the Nazi authorities in Poland. Through a miraculous chain of events, he managed to escape Warsaw at the outset of the war and reached Italy. From there, he boarded a ship bound for Palestine in 1940 with several of his sons and began to slowly rebuild his chasidic dynasty.

The soul of a Jew is pure. No matter how sullied the building, the foundation is never spoiled. We are assured that no amount of sin can sever the connection of a Jew from his Maker. Thus, Hashem gives us an opportunity each and every year to remove the stench of sin that we have brought upon ourselves through the t’shuvah process on Yom Kippur. No matter one’s station in life, Hashem is willing and eager to accept every last one of His children back into the fold. As we say: “Al da’as HaMakom v’al da’as hakahal…anu mispalelim im ha’avaryanim – With Hashem’s consent and the consent of the congregation ... we pray even with the sinners.”