It happened on erev Yom Kippur of 2016, a new world in which it sometimes seems that so many Jewish instincts have become dulled.
The story is about a dedicated administrator who ran a network of mosdos in Eretz Yisroel: when the institutions were found guilty of circumventing tax laws, the chairman took the fall. Now, he sits in prison, serving his sentence.
On erev Yom Kippur, this chassid was desperate to immerse himself in a mikva. Permission for the half-hour leave was repeatedly denied and his lawyer had no recourse other than to request an emergency hearing with the district judge.Early on the morning of erev Yom Kippur, the courtroom in the town of Natzeret saw the inmate pleading for a few minutes to purify himself before the holy day, representatives of Israel’s Prison Service maintaining that there was no precedent for such a privilege.A surprise participant in the proceedings was Rav Yitzchok Dovid Grossman of nearby Migdal Ha’emek, who assured the judge that he’d already seen to it that the mikva was open and ready for use.
The judge asked the petitioner if he would be willing to forfeit his right to his official furlough- a seventy-two hour leave- in exchange for the half hour break. “Yes,” he replied enthusiastically, “my grandfathers in Russia gave up much more than that for the chance to toivel in a mikva.”
(I know. At this point in the story, there are inevitably some who will frown and say, ‘What a chilul Hashem, to commit tax fraud, and now he wants to go to the mikva, like some kind of tzaddik?” To them, I say: do you have no inconsistency in your life? Are you so sure that you would be found clean of any trace of chilul Hashem? Or is the chilul Hashem, perhaps, that he got caught?)
The judge agreed that, if Rav Grossman would serve as guarantor, the inmate could go, accompanied by the prison guards. Just as the elated prisoner prepared to go toivel, an official from the prison system raised an issue. The law prohibits prisoners on leave to circulate in prison garb, and in their haste to get to the courthouse, no one had thought to bring civilian clothing for the inmate. There was a moment’s silence, then Rav Grossman stepped into a side room. He returned a moment later carrying his pants, which he handed to the prisoner. “Here,” said the rov, whose silk bekeshe reaches well past his knees, “now he has clothing.” In an undershirt and tzitzis and the pants of Migdal Haemek’s beloved rov, the prisoner went off to prepare himself for Yom Kippur.