Harav Shalom Lev, the traveling sofer sta”m of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe has returned from another successful trip, checking tefillin and mezuzos in various cities in Russia. In the course of his two-week trip, Rav Shalom visited Nizhny, Perm, Chelyabinsk and St. Petersburg.

Each year before Rosh Hashanah the RCE’s traveling sofer makes the rounds through various cities, giving Jews the chance to have their tefillin and mezuzos examined before the Yom Hadin. He charges only a minimal fee for the service, and if it is necessary to replace them, residents are given the opportunity to purchase new tefillin and/or mezuzos at highly subsidized prices.

It is estimated that during his trip Rav Shalom checked approximately 800 mezuzos and 100 sets of tefillin, and he sold dozens of mezuzos and tefillin sets.

In addition to examining tefillin and mezuzos, Rav Shalom, who is heavily involved in chinuch in Eretz Yisrael, led fascinating workshops for some thousand Jewish children, in which he showed them how tefillin and mezuzos are made and explained many of the halachos involved.

In the city of Perm, one of the Jewish prisoners asked Rav Shalom to bring him a set of tefillin to use in his cell. The local prison officials required Rav Shalom to open the set of tefillin and show them its contents before they would allow the prisoner to bring the tefillin into his cell. Rav Shalom opened up the tefillin in the presence of the prison’s management and staff and showed them the parchments that were inside. As a result, they permitted the package to be brought into the prisoner’s cell, and the young Jew was zocheh to don tefillin.

In each of the cities where Rav Shalom visited, he stayed at the home of the local rav. Rabbi Shimon Bergman hosted him in Nizhny, Rabbi Zaman Deutch in Perm, Rabbi Meir Kirsch in Chelyabinsk, and Rabbi Tzvi Pinsky in St. Petersburg.

RCE’s deputy director Rabbi Aryeh Goldberg was extremely pleased with this year’s safrus campaign. “This has been another of the RCE’s successful initiatives,” he said, adding that, “immediately following Rabbi Lev’s trip, dozens of rabbanim contacted our offices requesting that their cities be included in the next safrus campaign.