The story that Reb Naftali Cohen told to Israel’s Channel 13 News calls to mind age-old stories of the mesirus nefesh of yesteryear.

Reb Cohen, who lives in Beit Shemesh, received a phone call on Wednesday asking if he would travel to Ukraine! to perform a bris for a baby in Odessa since all the mohelim in Ukraine had already fled the country. Reb Cohen declined the request since his wife had just given birth a week before, but told them to call him back if they can’t find anyone else.

The Channel 13 interviewer interrupted him and said: “I spoke to Rav Shlomo Bakst [the Rav of Odessa] and asked him, how did they think they could find someone to fly into a war zone? He told me: ‘We just need tzadik meshuga echad [one crazy tzadik]’ and here I am talking to him!”

“Yes, I’m meshuga,” Reb Cohen responded. “A tzadik, I don’t know.”

On Thursday, they called Reb Cohen back and told him that they scheduled a flight for him to Moldova. “‘There’s no other mohel,’ they said. ‘You said you would come if there was no other mohel.'”

Reb Cohen ran to catch the plane, not even stopping to take a change of clothing, only grabbing his bris tools. He flew to Kishinev and then proceeded to the border crossing. But he ran into trouble when the Ukrainian border guards discovered his bris keilim in his bag. It was davka the powder that is sprinkled on the baby after the bris that aroused the guards’ suspicion. Reb Cohen heard them say ‘drugs, drugs,’ and suddenly 15 police officers surrounded him and he saw one of them holding handcuffs.

Reb Cohen somehow explained to them what he does and managed to convince them to let him go after five hours of waiting in the freezing cold. He crossed into Ukraine and proceeded to Odessa. He said he experienced nissim because although he passed countless checkpoints, he sat in the car saying Tehillim and they never stopped his car.

He arrived in Odessa at 3 pm. on Erev Shabbos and the parents were already in a panic and crying. “Do the bris! We’re already waiting. We want it to be on the 8th day.”

“I saw the mesirus nefesh,” Reb Cohen said. “I was so happy that I have a cheilek in it. I immediately performed the bris.”

The secular Channel 13 interviewer said: “Naftali, I need to ask you. Are you meshugah? To fly from Israel to Odessa during days like these? What is this? Where does this come from?”

“Am Yisrael are meshugaim,” Reb Cohen responded. “The bris is the love – that Hashem loves us and this the love that we return to Hashem. It’s a bris that can’t be severed – Am Yisrael from Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And in every situation, at every time, throughout the generations, especially in the former Soviet Union, Am Yisrael was moser nefesh for this great mitzvah.”

“The mesirus nefesh was on the part of my wife [who was a week after birth]. When they first asked me I said: ‘I’m not afraid but I can’t leave my wife.’ She told me, let’s ask the Rav. We asked the Rav and he said; ‘If you’re not afraid, it’s a mitzvah that we’re moser nefesh for.'”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)