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NEWS
Miracle at Avos U'Bonim Head Office
by Yated Ne'eman Staff
Motzei Shabbos Parshas Beshalach, Rabbi Dovid
Herskowitz's phone rang. "There has been a break-in at the
Avos U'Bonim office, please come immediately!"
Rabbi Herskowitz later recalled, "While driving to the
office, the logistics were flying through my mind. Were the
computers and all the data backed up? What about all the new
upcoming programs? Will we have to start from scratch?"
Avos U'Bonim's office in the Geulah neighborhood of Jerusalem
is the nerve center of an international organization which
now includes 1,100 weekly learning centers for fathers and
sons, from Venezuela to Vienna and from Lakewood to London
and in 900 botei midrash all over Eretz Yisroel.
In addition to coordinating the learning programs, Avos
U'Bonim distributes literature, publicity material and prizes
to all the centers twice a year — a mammoth operation
run on a shoestring budget. Avos U'Bonim also runs Yeshivas
Mordechai Hatzaddik in botei midrash on Purim all over
the world, sending out thousands of posters, fliers and
prizes. At the time that the break-in happened, their massive
Purim campaign was just getting going. Were all the prizes
and equipment to be taken, the damage would be
devastating!
Rabbi Herskowitz describes his arrival at the office that
night: "As the office door swung open I saw the terrible mess
— broken glass all over the floor and drawers and
cupboards overturned. The safe had been ripped up from the
concrete floor. But all the equipment was piled up neatly, as
if waiting for a pickup! Then the picture became clear. The
burglars had probably first come intending to grab the
furnishings and run — but then they had seen the safe.
Obviously the valuables and money in there were worth more.
So they took that and left our computers, phones, printers
and copiers behind, leaving the nerve center of our operation
intact. Boruch Hashem!
"What the thieves didn't know, and would only find out once
they got it open later, was that the safe had just been
emptied before Shabbos, and there was nothing in it! So now
in everything we do we can clearly see Hashem's
Hashgochoh, saving Avos U'Bonim from disaster and
enabling us to continue our work of encouraging limud
Torah."
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