Parshas Ki Sisa (Shushan Purim) 5785
- Torah Tavlin
- Mar 13
- 3 min read
וראה כל העם אשר אתה בקרבו את מעשה ה' כי נורא הוא אשר אני עשה עמך ... (לד-י)
The yeshivos in Europe were unlike the yeshivos in our days. Today, the yeshivos take full care of all the needs of the bachurim, but it wasn’t so in Europe. The yeshivos didn’t have dormitories; most bachurim were far from home, and so boys would sleep on the benches in the local shul. Even then, the benches weren’t enough for all the boys; often only the older bachurim had the privilege of sleeping on a bench! The younger bachurim had to sleep on the floor.
One particular thirteen-year-old boy was having a hard time sleeping on the floor and was getting tired of yeshivah life. One day, he received a telegram from his elderly uncle who ran a successful business in a distant town. It read: “We are offering you to take over our successful business. We don’t have any descendants to continue it, and you’re the most capable relative to run it, so please come and we will set you up.”
The boy was very tempted by the offer. He wouldn’t have this discomfort anymore. Sleeping on a cold floor in a wintery night wasn’t enjoyable, and with uncomfortable sleep every night, he asked himself what he was really gaining out of yeshivah? “I can’t continue like this,” he told himself, “enough is enough. I’m going to take him up on the offer.”
The night before he planned to leave the yeshivah, the door of the shul opened, and a woman who had just lost her husband walked in with a stack of blankets. Her late husband owned a textile shop, and she was giving the bachurim what she hadn’t sold from her business. All the bachurim, especially this boy, happily took of her gift.
Many years later, in 1976, the Rosh Yeshivah of Ponovezh, HaGaon HaRav Elazar Menachem Man Schach zt”l, called his grandson into his office and asked for a favor. “We need to go Haifa today,” he told him. “There’s a woman who passed away, and I want to be at her levayah.”
The grandson complied, and they drove through a driving rain to the cemetery in Haifa. However, the grandson was surprised to see how few people were there. Only eight men had shown up and R’ Schach and he completed the minyan. This perked up the grandson’s curiosity. “Why is my holy Zaida partaking in this levayah?”
The rain persisted through the levayah, and after she was buried, everyone quickly made their way back to their cars. The grandson brought R’ Schach to the passenger seat, but R’ Schach didn’t immediately get in, instead standing out in the rain for a few more moments. Eventually, he got back into the car, and they drove back to Bnei Brak.
R’ Schach was aware of his grandson’s wonder, and so he explained himself. “This woman was responsible for making me who I am. If not for her, I wouldn’t have continued in yeshivah, and I wouldn’t have become the Rosh Yeshivah. It was this lady who was the woman who gave us the blankets that fateful night when I was ready to leave the yeshivah and run my uncle’s successful business. I had been so cold, so fatigued, and was ready to take up his offer. When she arrived and gave us those blankets, it gave me the courage to stay on, and I declined my uncle’s offer.”
“But what was the reason,” asked the grandchild, “that you stayed out in the rain when we’d gotten back to the car?”
“I wanted to remember what it felt like to lie on the floor every night on those cold wintery days, and what her gift had spared me from feeling. That way, I can properly appreciate what she did for me.”
R’ Schach’s grandson explained that there are several lessons to take from his grandfather’s actions. First is the degree to what R’ Schach did to show his hakaras hatov to a woman who helped him many years earlier, going all the way to Haifa amidst his busy schedule. Also important is how R’ Schach wanted to feel the discomfort of the cold and rainy day to properly appreciate the chessed that she did all those years prior. But third, and perhaps most important of all, is that her chessed had an unbelievable effect which saved an entire generation. Indeed, the mitzvos that we do have unbelievable power to them. Sometimes we’re given a picture of the effects, and sometimes not, but the effects are there regardless. (Stories to Inspire)