When Reb Dudi Goldschmidt, a Lubavitcher Chossid from Crown Heights, found himself in Eretz Yisroel this week, he decided to visit the Litzman family, shluchim to South Korea, who were sitting shiva for their son, Menachem Mendel, who passed away last week under tragic circumstances.

“I didn’t know them personally,” Reb Dudi shared, “but I thought to myself – a shliach is sitting shiva, and under such painful circumstances, I need to go.”

He made his way to the shiva house and walked in quietly. It was a calm hour; only one other visitor was there. Turning to the father, Rabbi Asher Litzman, he said gently: “Reb Asher, you don’t know me, but I’m a fellow Chossid. We’re all one family.”

Rabbi Litzman looked up and replied, “I know exactly who you are. Ten years ago, you met my son – the one who just passed away – and hearing how much Tanya he knew by heart, you invited him to your home and gave him a dollar from the Rebbe.”

Reb Dudi was stunned. He barely remembered the encounter, and certainly hadn’t connected it to this boy.

Later that day, a friend sent him a screenshot of a message he had written himself ten years earlier and had long forgotten about.

The message read:

“On the way home from a shturemdike and lively Shabbos Mevorchim farbrengen, I met my good friend Reb Shimmy Weinbaum. He told me that the boy walking next to him is ten years old, his name is Menachem Litzman, the son of Reb Asher, and he and his family are shluchim to South Korea. The boy knows the entire Sefer HaTanya, including the hakdama, by heart. I was extremely moved, and I told him that on Motzei Shabbos he should come to my house, and I’ll give him a dollar I received from the Rebbe.”

“We’re really all one family,” Reb Dudi concludes his story.