The Emissary in Panama

The Rebbe once told of his trip through South America to raise funds for the building of Kiryat Sanz. When he reached Panama, he found the city in an uproar over something that had just happened. There were two communities, Sephardic and Ashkenazic. The Sephardic community was made up of fine, upstanding people with an outstanding young Rav who gave them shiurim. The Ashkenazim had strayed from the path of Torah, but some of the older generation did not want their children to attend the government schools, and so they had brought a teacher from Eretz Yisroel to teach them.

The teacher arrived in the middle of Yom Kippur, and the whole community was outraged that a Jew would travel on that day. They were so appalled that when the Rebbe told them he had come to raise funds for a community in Eretz Yisroel, he had to reassure them that he had no connection to those sinners.

The Rebbe remarked, “See how great was this man's wickedness, that he did not refrain from traveling on Yom Kippur. Yet he saw himself as someone coming to teach others about Judaism and to fight intermarriage. This is our great tragedy in this golus, that most of the Jewish people do not know how to tell good from evil, or light from darkness.”