The Chazon Ish
A special meeting which took place last week for Taharas Hamishpocha was attended by hundreds of rabbonim involved in family purity. The purpose of this annual convention is to enable those rabbonim to upgrade their proficiency and expertise in the laws of mikveh and in the hashkofoh outlook of drawing families to the practice of family purity, all under conditions of leisure so as to recharge the batteries, so to speak, of those involved in day to day activity for the purity of the Jewish people.
This convention was opened by HaRav Yitzchok Zilberstein, Rav of Ramat Elchanan and member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, in a very illuminating and fortifying address. "Several years ago," he related, "I met the rav of the Yad Eliyahu neighborhood in Tel Aviv, who told me that some years earlier, the Tel Aviv municipality refused to allocate land for the construction of a new mikveh in my neighborhood. I was shocked. The distance from that neighborhood to the nearest mikveh was great, a fact which might cause problems of observing family purity!
HaRav Yitzchok Zilberstein shlita
"'I approached the Chazon Ish,' the rav said to me, 'who immediately asked, `Is there a shul there?'
"`I replied affirmatively. He turned to me and said very unequivocally: `Build a mikveh on that very site.'
"`I responded, `But isn't it explicitly stated in Halacha that it is forbidden to transform a beis knesset into a bathhouse?'
"`The Chazon Ish agreed but said: `It is also ruled that a Torah scholar is permitted to transgress a lesser prohibition in order to save others from a far greater one. Therefore, go yourself and demolish the beis knesset and build, with your own hands, a mikveh in its place so as to save many people from the punishment of koreis.'"
