In Heaven a great fire is roaring. Angels sway, and sages hold hands and dance, “Amar Reb Akiva, Amar Reb Akiva…”
Where is the king of the night, the great sage Rebi Shimon bar Yochai?
He leaves the circle, he is shaking shuddering…
Whoosh! At the entrance to Heaven, a clamour.
Neshamos start to fly inside:
A yeshiva bachur
A singer from Monsey
A chassan
Two little brothers
A young father
Another young father
A grandfather
A 14-year-old boy and his 9-year-old brother..
The fire sputters, the song dies. Reb Shimon rushes over and embraces the neshamos.
They blink in the light. They look at one another. Disoriented, confused, bewildered, but filled with an immeasurable light.
“Come with me, come says Reb Shimon.
“Us?”
“Yes, you, Yerushalmi, Litvak, grandfather,
Gerrer, Skverer, Mizrachi, Sfardi..”
They follow him, looking down, down, beyond the haze and the clouds where a huge crowd is stranded on a bleeding mountaintop.
“Why us?” It is the nine-year-old.
But they know, each one of them; they’ve accomplished their goals. They feel light, whole, they can see the completion of their individual tafkids.
Slowly, the fire comes to light again. They take hands again, the Chafetz Chaim and the Berdicheve and Avraham Avinu and David Hamelech and Avrohom Daniel Ambon and Moshe Bergman and Yonoson Chevroni and Yedidyia Chiyuis and Eliahu Cohen and Yossi Cohen and Simcha Bunim Diskind and Chen Doron and Moshe Mordechai and Yosef Dovid Elchad-Sharf and Yehoshua and Moshe Natan Englander and Mordcha Yoel Fekete and Yedidya Asher Fogel and Elazar Gefner and Shragi Gestetner and Daniel Morris and Eliezar Mordechai Goldberg and Yosef Greenbaum and Eliezer Tzvi Joseph and Nachman Kirshbaum and Shmuel Zvi Klagsbald and Menachem Knoblowitz and Elazar Yitzchak Koltai and David Krause and Shlomo Zalman Leibowitz and Yosef Yehuda Levi and Yishai Me’ulam and Moshe Levy and Yosef Mastorov and Shimon Matlon and Chaim Rock and Yehuda Leib Rubin and Chaim Ozer Seller and Moshe Ben Shalom and Elkana Shila and Chanoch Solod and Dov Steinmetz and Yaakov Elchanan Strakovsky and Yosef Amram Tauber and Ariel Tzadik and Moshe Tzarfati and Menachem Asher Zeckbach.
All of them dance together.
Light, unity, joy.
Even as they dance, these newly-arrived neshamos, even as their rise to the greatest heights, they see all the way down to those who don’t understand.
Those who are pained, who stumble, who don’t know why or what.
Those who still keep themselves distant from their brothers, those who stray.
“Amar Reb Akiva, Amar Reb Akiva the neshamos sing, and slowly a halting melody replaces the age-old song. A song just 10 years old, composed by one among them “Chamol chamol chamol al amecha, racheim, racheim, racheim al nachlasecha, chisa na krov rachmecha..”
We have goodness and gladness and light, but have mercy on your children down belown
“Chaneinu vaneinu…
Can you please send a link to the song mentioned in her words. Moved me to tears.
Link to the song: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl7nhpf1lqk0l4s/Video%20Apr%2030%2C%201%2003%2031%20AM.mp4?dl=0
thank you for posting this, I had searched for it and couldn’t find it. This video confirms something I thought before, that these 45 kedoshim were among the holiest people in am yisrael.