Saving a World | Rabbi Menachem Feifer

About 40 years ago, the State of Israel embarked on a project. It was called Project Solomon. Where about 17,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted from Ethiopia to Eretz Yisroel. Ethiopia was in the midst of a very bloody civil war, and the Yidden were caught in between the gunfire, between the two battling armies. Eretz Yisroel, the State of Israel, sent one of their top statesmen to negotiate with the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, who was then a communist, to ask him to allow the State of Israel to bring these Jews to Eretz Yisroel. And the Prime Minister demanded a tremendous amount of money before he would allow them to be taken from the country. In his negotiations with the Prime Minister, he managed to pull down the price of what he was asking for to a much more reasonable amount, but the Prime Minister insisted on one more thing, which seemed to be an insurmountable problem. He said he would only let the Jews go, if the president of the United States, who was then George Bush, would write a letter to him, addressing him as Prime Minister of Ethiopia and requesting that he free the Jews. And the reason why it was such a difficult thing to procure such a letter was because at that point, the United States did not recognize the government of this Prime Minister. And that's exactly what he wanted. And so, the State of Israel sent this statesman to Washington to beg President Bush to write this letter. President Bush was in a quandary. On the one hand, it’s the honor of the United States of America. On the other hand, so many lives at stake. He called a meeting of his closest cabinet members, and they went for a vote. And they were down to the last vote, the vote was even. And one man stood up and he said, he was the deciding vote, he said: I have to tell you a story that took place in the late ‘40s, when a fire broke out in an apartment building and three African-American children were caught in an apartment on the fourth floor and seemingly, there was no way to save them. And all of a sudden, a dark-skinned gentleman took a cover, a blanket of some sort, drenched it in water, wrapped it around himself, ran up the stairs, broke into the apartment, and saved the lives of the three children. By the time he came down with the children, the parents, who had gone away for a moment, had come back, and they began to hug and kiss him. You saved our children. What can we give you to show our thanks? The fellow said: I'm a Jew from Ethiopia. What I just did was a Mitzvah, and Jews don't sell Mitzvos. Said Secretary Colin Powell, I was one of those three children. I think today is my turn to do my Mitzvah to save Ethiopian Jews. And he voted that the president should write the letter, which he did, and the rest is history. When a Yid does a Mitzvah, he doesn't know the repercussions. 17,000 Jews were saved from one Yid’s Mitzvah. When we are עומד בניסיון, we don't know what we're doing, not just for ourselves, for our generations, but for all of Klal Yisroel. One Yid could save a world.