The Miraculous Escape — Three Months in Moscow, One Month in Odessa — The Ship — Home!

First — I hereby bring you the good tidings: blessed be G‑d — through great and true miracles of Pesach and of Purim [the two holidays of miraculous redemption — Pesach for Egypt, Purim for Persia — invoked here for R' Shmuel's own deliverance from the Soviet Union] — I have gone out from death to life — from servitude to redemption — after the depth of the sufferings and dangers that passed over me without measure and reckoning — which cannot be assessed in any mind — and all the more so told. And literally every moment I was ready for killing and hanging [לתליה — execution by hanging; a capital punishment that was actively used by Soviet authorities against those accused of counterrevolutionary activity], G‑d forbid — for they suspected me of what they suspected, G‑d forbid. What shall I say, what shall I speak? Even if all the days were ink and so on — it is impossible to tell or assess the sufferings and fears that passed over me — and the greatness of the miracles that G‑d, blessed be He, performed for me. I was in imprisonment for three months in Moscow — and one month in Odessa. And it is now two and a half weeks since I was put on a ship through very great miracles — completely beyond nature — and I came, blessed be G‑d, to Eretz Yisrael on Thursday of Parashas Bechukosai. [Parashas Bechukosai — the parasha that begins "If you follow My statutes" — the parasha of redemption after suffering; arriving on this parasha carries spiritual resonance] And on the previous Friday I came to Jerusalem — and entered the home of my dear father-in-law, may he live. And I am now together with my dear wife, may she live — and my dear precious beloved son, may he live. And we must go to be at our own table — for by my father-in-law it is absolutely impossible to stay — for he is poor and destitute. Therefore I must immediately leave his table.