At 83, Sheftil Binyamin, once known as a Catholic priest and today himself deafblind, wrapped tefillin at the Chabad House in Hong Kong with Rabbi Mendy Rabinowitz in a moving moment, and surprised him by asking that a mezuzah be placed on the door of his home in Macau.

By Tzemach Feller – Lubavitch.com

His parents named him Sheftil Binyamin. Born deaf, he attended a Catholic school for children with special needs. In his early twenties, he converted to Catholicism and was later ordained. Known to the world as Father Cyril Bernhard Axelrod, he became a Catholic priest of the Redemptorist Order, where he devoted himself to helping deaf and deafblind people.

Over the years, he worked tirelessly to improve the lives of people with disabilities, establishing centers and institutions for the deaf in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and Macau. Even after losing his vision to Usher Syndrome—a rare genetic condition—he continued to communicate through a Braille keyboard and finger signing. Cyril went on to become the first deafblind person to be recognized as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

And yet, he never forgot. He still remembered the Kiddush his father would make on Friday night, the challah his mother would bake. But he had journeyed far from that world.

Then, one day in December 2024, Rabbi Yehoshua Soudakoff—born deaf himself, and today the Chabad representative to the deaf community in Eretz Yisroel—met Cyril in England. Together with the rabbi, Cyril put on tefillin.

Today, at eighty-three, Cyril lives in Macau, in a center he himself founded some twenty-five years ago. Rabbi Mendy Rabinowitz of Chabad of Hong Kong reached out, and Cyril came to the Chabad House. Once again he donned tefillin, the words of Shema Yisroel rising unbidden to his lips, recalled from his youth so many decades earlier.

Tracing letters gently onto his palm, Rabbi Rabinowitz welcomed him home. Then Cyril turned to the rabbi with a request: to come to his home and install a mezuzah on his door.