What Did Rabbi Grossman Do in a Monastery Dressed in Jeans and a Wig?

In a column published last weekend in the 'BeKehilla' newspaper, Rabbi Yitzchak David Grossman, head of Migdal Ohr institutions, recounted an extraordinary story about rescuing a young man caught in the net of a missionary.

During the Ten Days of Repentance, the rabbi said, a respected Jewish man came to his home, crying and sobbing. His grandson, whose parents live in Europe, was sent to study in Israel, but it now turns out he rented an apartment with a man who was a missionary, and this man convinced him to move to the Deir Hanna monastery to study Christianity. "How can I go pray on Yom Kippur before the Creator of the universe when my grandson, my son's son, resides in a monastery?"

Deir Hanna is a Muslim village, at the edge of which, on a high mountain, stands a Christian monastery. Rabbi Grossman, moved by the grandfather's tears, met with the village elder and sought his help in entering the monastery. The elder said his son was responsible for supplying food to the monastery, and he could take him up the mountain. To ensure his appearance wouldn't reveal his identity, the rabbi wore jeans and a wig. "Thus, I rode on the tractor, alongside the bread and vegetables, on my way to the monastery."

The monastery staff thought he was a new resident wanting to learn Christianity and allowed him to enter. Rabbi Grossman quickly located the young man from Europe and asked to speak with him. Once in a side room, he removed the wig, to the young man's astonishment. "Rabbi Grossman? What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" Rabbi Grossman replied with a question. "Your grandfather, a Holocaust survivor who went through the camps, cannot bear the injustice you're causing him." The young man began to cry and complain about his family's sins against him, but Rabbi Grossman stood firm: I understand you, but you've gone too far. In two days, it's Yom Kippur. How can you be here on this holy day?

When trying to convince the young man to at least come to Migdal HaEmek for Yom Kippur, the young man responded: "I eat on Yom Kippur."

"I responded and told him: I have a fridge full of all good things. Just come."

The young man promised nothing. Rabbi Grossman warmly bid him farewell and returned to the tractor waiting outside.

"On Yom Kippur eve, I was very tense to see if the lost grandson would return," Rabbi Grossman writes. "With a heavy heart, I went down to the 'Kol Nidrei' prayer. The young man didn't arrive...On the night after the holy day, I received an emotional phone call from the grandfather...As the holy day began, the grandson suddenly appeared at his grandfather's house, filled with remorse and repentance."

Many years later, when entering to pray the Mincha prayer in a small synagogue in Monsey, USA, a local young man approached Rabbi Grossman. Smiling, he bent over to him and whispered: "Rabbi Grossman, where's the wig?"...