Taken Before His Bar Mitzvah, Stolen Tefillin Find Their Way Home 28 Years Later

Some stories are so full of hashgacha pratis, you just have to stop and say: “Only in the Jewish world.”

Late Sunday night, Shmuel Rogorotsky, a longtime member of the Los Angeles community, texted a friend with an unusual request: help recover a pair of tefillin that went missing... 28 years ago.

Yes, you read that right.

Just days before his bar mitzvah, Shmuel’s tefillin were stolen from the backseat of a car parked behind his family home in L.A. Despite turning over every trash can from Fairfax to Melrose, they were never found. Until now.

This week, in Frisco, Texas — hundreds of miles and nearly three decades later — a man walked into the local Chabad House with a curious item: a pair of velvet tefillin bags, clearly Lubavitch in style, discovered in his late father's belongings. His father, it turns out, had been a cab driver in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s.

Enter Rabbi Mendy Kesselman, the local shliach in Frisco. Sensing something unique about the tefillin, he called his brother, Rabbi Moshe Kesselman, who just so happened to be giving a shiur in L.A. at that exact moment, with Shmuel Rogorotsky sitting right next to him.

Needless to say, jaws dropped.

“I was speechless,” said Shmuel. “I never thought I’d see them again.”

The story only gets better. Another friend visiting Dallas that very day arranged to meet halfway and retrieve the tefillin to bring them back to their rightful owner — just in time for Shmuel to finally put them on again.

Some stories take time to unfold. Others take a miracle, a minivan, and a whole lot of mazal. Either way, we’re chalking this one up as a win for Divine delivery — 28 years in the making.

Shmuel Rogorotsky reunited with his tefillin

Rabbi Mendy Kesselman, the local shliach in Frisco, after picking up the tefillin