Today Nachman Futterman lives in Jerusalem with his wife and children. His search for spirituality began in the 1970s, when he experimented with Eastern yoga and then connected with an interfaith rabbi who was good friends with a swami. Afterwards he joined Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s synagogue on the Upper West Side. He visited Israel for the first time in 1984.
Of course, I was planning to go to the Kotel (Western Wall) for Shabbat. After all, the Kotel is the holiest place in Israel, which is the holiest country in the world. I was really looking forward to the experience.
I remember going to the Kotel, walking up to a minyan, and then feeling as if I were being pushed away. I walked up to another minyan, and again I felt as if I were being pushed away. This kept happening again and again. I got to a point where I turned to God and said, “Maybe I don’t belong here.”
I walked away from the Kotel and started crying. I had traveled so far to come to the holiest of places and I was not comfortable praying there! It occurred to me that perhaps this whole religious thing was not for me.
When I was really at the end of the end, I noticed the section of the Kotel that is inside a tunnel. I felt as if there was a ray of light emanating from there. Something was drawing me, beckoning me to enter. I went inside and saw two old men with white beards and shtreimels singing the Breslov song “Sab’einu (Sate us).” Their faces were shining! I was mesmerized.
As I was standing there, a stranger (who later became a good friend of mine) patted me on the shoulder and asked, “Do you know who these guys are?”
“No, who are they?” I asked.
“They’re Breslover chassidim. Would you like to meet them?”
I did. I told him that I was staying at the King David Hotel. We made up for him to meet me and my friends on Shabbat morning to take us to the Breslov shul in Meah Shearim.
That Shabbat, we prayed Shacharit in the Breslov shul and ate lunch with Reb Moshe Bienenstock. That was my first Shabbat in Israel. God had brought me straight to Breslov. It was most amazing.
(From “Rebbe Nachman and the Knights of the Rosh HaShanah Table”)
