Bnei Brak: Now with new and improved protection!

My missile post

After the missile hit in Bnei Brak, my phone went crazy. “Are you gonna write something about the Chazon Ish’s promise”? But someone had just died, and I didn’t feel right writing a piece immediately. Besides “the promise was broken” is a boring angle. It’s not like any of my readers actually believed it literally anyways. (At least I hope not). And I don’t get joy in people’s deaths.

"Bnei Brak is Protected"

Besides, the promise had been broken already before - the promise is for no missiles, not no injuries.

But then the Yated went and published this article by Tzvi Yaakovson on June 18th¹ - AFTER the missile had already struck someone!

In Bnei Brak, unlike elsewhere in the country, residents were calm. The Chazon Ish famously said that the zechus of Torah learning will prevent missiles from landing in the city, and they relied on his promise. To be honest, I felt the same confidence in Yerushalayim, since my own neighborhood of Givat Shaul is similar to Bnei Brak; it is a community steeped in Torah and chessed. I began to feel fear only when I heard that shrapnel had fallen in Har Nof and in the city of Elad. I don’t know if anyone in America has had the opportunity to experience this sense of fear mixed with the clear knowledge that everything that occurs in the world is the product of a Heavenly decree. A baal teshuvah once related that he received a drink from Rav Uri Zohar, who asked him to recite a brocha over it. Rav Uri taught him the brocha of shehakol nihyeh b’dvaro, which states that everything occurs on Hashem’s command, and the man shouted the words of the brocha, adding on his own, “Literally everything!” I have had a taste of this feeling as well: On leil Shabbos and then again on motzoei Shabbos, I witnessed the missiles flying through the Yerushalayim sky, and I watched the interceptions taking place in midair. Through it all, I felt that I was living through a real-life fulfillment of the tefillah of Al Hanissim.

Let me add a story about the recent events in Bnei Brak. There is a talented, affable gentleman named Yehoshua Mandel who lives in Bnei Brak. He is a Vizhnitzer chossid, and he is also a deputy mayor of the city. On Friday night, he was at the Rebbe’s tish in the bais medrash of Vizhnitz, along with thousands of other chassidim. The Vizhnitzer Rebbe recently returned from Los Angeles, where he underwent an operation, and is currently being treated at Hadassah Hospital in Yerushalayim while temporarily residing in Moshav Orah near the hospital during the week. On Friday night, the Rebbe was in Bnei Brak and everyone was excited by his presence. Reb Yehoshua informed me on motzoei Shabbos, “On Friday night, in the middle of the tish, a yungerman who drives an ambulance arrived. He told us that he had been summoned to the home of a secular woman on Rechov Tirtzah in Ramat Vegan, who lived alone with her two children. ‘To which hospital should I take you?’ he asked her, and the woman replied, ‘No hospital at all! Take me to Bnei Brak, where there are no missiles.’ He brought her to Rechov Golomb, which is on the border of Bnei Brak and Ramat Gan, but the woman refused to get out of the ambulance there. ‘This isn’t Bnei Brak,’ she insisted. ‘Take me to Rechov Chazon Ish, in the middle of the city!’”

I also received an update on events in Bnei Brak from a yungerman who lives on Rechov Chazon Ish. This yungerman informed me that when a missile hit Ramat Gan on motzoei Shabbos¸ it shattered a number of windowpanes in Bnei Brak. “The missile landed on Rechov Tirtzah, which is on the border between Bnei Brak and Ramat Gan,” he said. “I was in the safe room in my house, and the force of the impact caused me to fall to the floor. The windows shook from the impact, and we realized that the missile had landed nearby. We were terrified. I later discovered that the homes on the nearby Rechov Beeri and Rechov Aluf Simchoni had been damaged. Windows were shattered in dozens of apartments in Bnei Brak. Of course, I went to see the damage in Ramat Gan, and hundreds of other people from Bnei Brak did the same. The site of the missile strike was eerily close, and the destruction was awful. We felt that we had experienced a genuine miracle.”

This article is enough to turn me into a raging Slifkin, to be honest. But then I started to feel some empathy (which the author clearly lacks) - what about all those people who did believe the promise? What should they do?

Luckily, we do know the reason why it did land:

When asked whether the recent rocket strike in Pardes Katz invalidates the Chazon Ish’s promise of protection over Bnei Brak, Rav Shteinman responded by referencing the posuk in Bereishis in which Hashem promises Yaakov Avinu protection—yet Yaakov was still “greatly afraid.”

“Was the promise invalid? Of course not,” Rav Shteinman said. “But Chazal teach us that chait—sin—can interfere with even the greatest promise.”

He clarified that the Chazon Ish, based on firsthand testimony, stated that Bnei Brak is “surrounded by pages of Gemara”—a spiritual safeguard not dependent on city boundaries or municipal governance. However, Rav Shteinman cautioned, in areas surrounded by the spiritual equivalent of internet content rather than Torah, the protection may falter due to chait.

And what could be more spiritually equivalent to internet content in Bnei Brak than a Chabad Yeshiva!

A direct missile strike caused extensive damage to the Chabad Yeshiva in Bnei Brak overnight, yet miraculously, no one was harmed.

BUT WAIT

Even more striking was the sight that met the staff afterward: while windows were blown out and ceilings collapsed, a photo of the Rebbe, prominently displayed in one of the rooms, remained completely intact.

So there you have it, Tzvi Yaakovson and others: If you are getting nervous that the Chazon Ish promise isn’t working, carry a Rebbe picture on you! Problem solved!

And that’s my - hopefully more interesting - take.

1. Perhaps it went to print earlier. Either way, the article is embarrassing.