Seeds of Holiness | Rabbi Mordechai Stern

תר”ב 1842 the Gaon and Tzaddik, R’ Itzele Volozhiner, son of R’ Chaim of Volozhin, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Volozhiner Yeshiva, is summoned to Peterburg, the capital of Czarist Russia, with a number of other Rabbanim and Tzaddikim, to meet with government officials regarding Torah Chinuch. At that time, Peterburg, Saint Petersburg, was a bustling city that no Jews were allowed to reside in. It was a bustling city full of palaces and ministries, garrisons of soldiers, many soldiers patrolling the streets. It was a bustling capital city, completely devoid of a Jewish population. Late one night, R’ Itzele Volozhiner is walking alone in the streets of Peterburg, and he passes by a completely deserted area, an empty field. Suddenly he hears a choking sound of sobbing coming from inside this deserted field. He goes to investigate. There's nobody there, except a Russian soldier, standing guard. He came a little closer and he sees that the soldier is sobbing, crying, saying תיקון חצות in the middle of the night. This was a Yiddishe soldier, drafted in the Czar's army. And yet in the middle of the night, he's crying, he's pouring out his heart, crying for the Geulah, crying: וי להאי שכינתא דאיהו בגלותא. The heiliger Chofetz Chaim used to tell over this story, and he would recount something absolutely amazing. Forty four long years later, in 1886, finally, Yidden had been given the right to move into Saint Petersburg and a grand central Beis HaKnesses was erected for all of the Yidden in Saint Petersburg, and it was erected on that precise location in that empty field. And the Chofetz Chaim explained, Yaakov Avinu woke up in the morning after his מראה הסולם, he said, He said there was השראת השכינה in this place. A place where there’s השראת השכינה imbues that מקום with Kedushah, with the seeds of holiness, and at a later point, there will be a Beis HaMikdash in this place. Similarly, says the Chofetz Chaim, a place where a Yid cries and davens, a place where a Yid does a Mitzvah, this imbues, this plants, seeds and reservoirs of Kedushah that maybe, many years later, will find fruition in a מקום of Kedushah. As we travel in the streets, whether it's not the streets of Peterburg or the streets of whatever city we happen to find ourselves, we have to understand, Vayimaen Yidden, that every single time that we make a Kiddush Hashem, every single time a Yid is מתחזק, every single time you’re עומד בניסיון, every single time a Yid whispers words of Tefillah to the Ribono shel Olam, he's sowing seeds of Kedushah and the dividends and the growth can be absolutely cosmic. We can't even imagine what edifices of Kedushah we are building for ourselves and for all דורות.