Holiness in Unexpected Places

During a family trip to northern Israel recently, two images caught my attention. The first was in Tzfat. We have all seen many moving and creative memorial projects, but this was something new. At the entrance to a coffee shop stood an ordinary plastic-bottle recycling bin bearing a sign: “Recycling station to fund a tefillin stand, in memory of Staff Sgt. Uri Yitzchak Iluz.” 

Beside it was the tefillin stand itself, already installed in his memory—presumably funded, at least in part, by the bottles that had been collected for recycling. There was no Chabad emissary stationed there. It was simply there, waiting for anyone passing by who wanted to put on tefillin.