The synagogue at Eshel Hanassi, a agricultural school near Beer Sheva may draw a paucity of regular congregants, but its hobbit hole/igloo shape is full of amazing stories of kiruv and serendipity, a.k.a. hashgacha pratit.
Effi Eisenbach, and his wife Ronit, run the religious life and hachnassat orchim at Eshel. As necessity dictates, Effi is the resident rabbi, gabbai, and go-to guy and yes, he even cleans the shul, even though it should be cleaned along with all public venues of the school but it isn’t. So every erev Shabbat and chag, Effi can be found sweeping and washing the floor, cleaning the pews, wiping down the Aron Kodesh, along with arranging the books and setting the timers.
It wouldn’t be remiss to say that the cleaning of the shul was not among his favorite duties.
Then one erev Yom Kippur, he opened the shul door, ready to clean, when he encountered a shul that was not only already clean, but it was sparkling, shining, cleaner than he had ever seen it, or made it.
As he was trying to work out the mystery of who had cleaned the shul, he mentioned it to one of the cooks in the school’s kitchens. And she admitted to having cleaned the shul herself. Upon further questioning, Sarah, the cook, told Effi that when she had lived with her family in Morocco, they were responsible for cleaning the shul. It had been their family’s tradition. In a wave of nostalgia, she had gone to the shul to follow in her family’s tradition, feeling there was no better way to usher in the holiest day of the year.
In doing so, not only had Sara given the shul a fresh look, she had given Effi a fresh perspective of what it means to keep the shul clean, and he never again resented the task.
After all, it too is holy work.
