ועתה ישראל מה ה' אלקיך שואל מעמך .... לשמר את מצות ה' ואת חקתיו ... לטוב לך וגו' (י-יב,יג)
The saintly Rebbe, R’ Elimelech of Lizensk ZT”L, once recovered from a life-threatening illness. His closest disciples mustered their courage to ask him what he had seen while hovering between life and death.
The Rebbe recounted the following story: As I walked in the Garden of Eden, I saw among the most honored souls a familiar face. He looked very much like Mottel the Bookbinder. To be sure, Mottel was a G-d-fearing Jew, an honest, hard-working bookbinder, but he was otherwise an undistinguished ordinary Jew, not even much of a Torah scholar.
“Is it truly you, Reb Mottel?” he asked the soul as it approached him. “how did you get to this exalted place?”
“Well,” he responded, “When I was brought before the Heavenly Court, I had to admit that, regrettably, I had studied very little Torah. I didn’t have much of a head for it. Besides, we were very poor, so I had to find a way of earning money to help support the family. I was apprenticed, at an early age, to a bookbinder, I explained to the Court.....
“They began weighing my mitzvos and sins. On the right side of the scale, angels began putting all my good deeds. Then they pushed the scale down to make it weightier, saying this was for the joy and sincerity with which I performed the mitzvos. But then, other angels came forward and began to load my sins and misdeeds on the left scale. I watched with horror as my sins were added up. Most of the sins were truly not serious, and they happened because of my ignorance. But, though they were small, they were adding up dangerously, till they tipped the scale.
“As I stood before the Heavenly Court, trembling and ashamed, an angel suddenly appeared with a worn-out prayer book, a siddur, in his hand. Behind him was a line of wagons loaded with sacks.
“‘I am the angel in charge of stray pages from holy books. I go to every Jewish home, every synagogue and school. I look to see the condition of the holy books. Whenever I see a worn out book, with crumpled pages and loose covers it gives me tremendous pleasure, for this is a sign that the books are in constant use. But when I see that some of these books are tattered beyond repair, I am troubled, for every holy book has a holy soul, and every page has a soul, which must be treated with care and respect. In the course of my travels I met this man here on trial. Ever since he was a child, Mottel loved his little siddur and would often caress and kiss it before closing it. When it came time for Mottel to be apprenticed, he told his father that there was nothing he would like more than to be a bookbinder.
“‘I have never seen a bookbinder like Mottel,’ continued the angel in my defense. ‘He never got any pages mixed up, never missed a stitch, and always used the best materials. From time to time, he would go to the shuls in his town and collect holy books that cried out for attention. He took them home and worked late into the night to restore them, bind them and give them new life. He never charged for this and never even told anyone about it.
“‘I respectfully request that the Heavenly Court permit me to unload all the sacks of worn-out holy books to which Mottel the Bookbinder has given a second life, and put them on the scale with all his other mitzvos and good deeds.’”
The Heavenly Court agreed. Long before the wagons were half unloaded, the scale with the mitzvos clearly outweighed the other side. “Believe me, dear Rebbe,” Mottel concluded, “I was as astonished at what happened before my eyes as you were at seeing me in this place of honor.”
“I wanted to ask Mottel a few more questions,” explained R’ Elimelech, “but at just that moment I began to recover. Reb Mottel’s story speaks for itself. But let us also remember,” Reb Elimelech enjoined his disciples, “that Hashem never fails to give credit and reward for any good deed, even for such a seemingly trivial act as smoothing out a crumpled corner of a well worn page in a holy book.”
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