Eilat Mayor Relishes Opportunity to Pray

As he does every year, Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Shimon Eisenbach couldn’t let the Hebrew birthday of Eilat Mayor Meir Yitzhak-Halevy pass by without visiting his friend and giving him the opportunity to don the Jewish prayer boxes known as tefillin.

And so last Tuesday, the fifth day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, Eisenbach went to the mayor’s downtown office, where Yitzhak-Halevy promptly took a quick recess from a meeting with security officials to pray with the rabbi.

Yitzhak-Halevy turned to the others in his office to quote from the 127th Psalm: “If G-d will not guard a city, [its] watcher keeps his vigil in vain.”

As Eisenbach left, the mayor remarked that the Hebrew letters of “Eilat” stand for two acrostics: “Eisenbach will remember to bring tefillin” and “I will always remember my birthday.”