That simple kindness inspired a lifelong affinity for the Jewish People

Living Higher

Last week, Rabbi Michoel Ber Weissmandl, who leads Kollel Heichal HaTorah in Manchester, England, shared with his kehillah a personal story that highlights the lasting impact even a relatively small gesture can have. The Rav related that his daughter had spent several weeks in a local hospital due to medical complications. During that time, his rebbetzin would often purchase several bars of chocolate before heading to the hospital, and distributed them among the staff and patients in her daughter’s ward, spreading sweets and smiles.

On one such visit, an elderly patient graciously accepted the treat and then turned to Rebbetzin Weissmandl with a wide grin. “You’re Jewish!” she exclaimed. Then she added, “I have an amazing closeness to the Jewish people, and whenever there is bad press about them, I always say, ‘You don’t know these people!’ ”

Intrigued, the Rebbetzin asked her why. The elderly woman explained that her positive feelings stemmed from a single episode that had occurred some seven decades earlier in that very medical establishment, where she gave birth to her son. The joyous occasion, however, was marred by difficult hospital conditions. There was a shortage of available rooms, and as a non-insured patient, she was at the bottom of the priority list. Compounding the difficulty was the way things worked back then in the 1960s, when mothers and babies were often subject to extended hospital stays, designed to ensure both were fully healthy before returning home. The prospect of a long, uncomfortable stay in a makeshift room wasn’t especially appealing to the new mom.

Hospitalized at the same time was a Jewish woman who had paid for a private room. She somehow learned of this woman’s predicament and invited the roomless patient to share her private room for the duration of her stay, gratis.

“We became friends,” the grateful patient recalled to the Rebbetzin. “Once, she received jelly for dessert, and I asked the staff for the same. They told me that she was a private patient, and that was why she received jelly. When the Jewish woman heard that, she turned to me and said, ‘I really don’t need or like this jelly, and I would be so happy if you would have it.’ ”

The two new mothers eventually left the hospital and never saw one another again. Yet that simple kindness inspired a lifelong affinity for the Jewish People that was still going strong nearly seven decades later.

The Greatest Connection

This past Thursday, the second annual TorahLinks J3 Conference was held at Bell Works, NJ.  The J3 Conference brings together hundreds of students and young professionals from the Olami network, many of whom are in the process of finding their way toward a more observant Jewish life, alongside a similar number of Orthodox business leaders, for an evening of networking. The event represents a natural outgrowth of TorahLinks’s years-long partnership with the Lakewood Torah-centric business community.

At one dinner table, the conversation turned to everyone’s occupations, and a group of students learned that one of the Lakewood business executives also serves as a dayan on a local beis din and spends his mornings in the yeshivah in Lakewood. The students were duly impressed and requested to join a study session the next morning instead of their planned tour of Lakewood.

The conference buzzed with the energy of nearly 600 Jews gathered together, and included fireside chats with leaders at the top of their industries. Yet for this group, the highlight of the weekend didn’t take place in the grand setting of Bell Works, but in the far humbler setting of a chaburah room in Beis Yitzchak, sitting around a table, learning Torah.

A Mesorah, Restored

Two years after the passing of Lakewood mashgiach ruchani Rav Mattisyahu Salomon ztz”l, the yeshivah held a formal maamad hachtarah to install Rav Reuven Hechster as the new mashgiach. The monumental event took place Sunday evening, drawing thousands of talmidim who sang Rav Hechster from his office to the yeshivah’s cavernous dining room, where he gave his inaugural address.

Rav Hechster was born and raised in Eretz Yisrael before going to learn in Beth Medrash Govoha, where he became a talmid muvhak of Rav Nosson Meir Wachtfogel ztz”l, the legendary Lakewood mashgiach who served until his passing in 1998. Rav Hechster penned a series of seforim called Leket Reshimos containing the teachings of his great rebbi on a host of topics.

In 1999, Rav Hechster returned to Eretz Yisrael and was tapped by Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel ztz”l to serve as mashgiach in Mir-Brachfeld alongside Rav Aryeh Finkel ztz”l. For a quarter of a century, Rav Hechster held the position with distinction, developing into one of the central figures of the Israeli yeshivah community.

This past Sunday, Rav Hechster expanded that role to include the American Torah community as well with his appointment as Lakewood mashgiach. In his opening address, Rav Hechster made clear that he saw himself as perpetuating the derech he was first exposed to in Lakewood.

Rav Malkiel Kotler described the job of a mashgiach as instilling in the tzibbur the sense that they are a mamleches Kohanim v’goy kadosh, and that it was Rav Nosson who helped the talmidim of the yeshivah connect to Rav Aharon’s derech.

Rav Hechster opened his address by quoting his great rebbi. He quoted the Gemara (Berachos 6b) that states, “Kol adam she’yesh bo yiras Shamayim, devarav nishma’in — Any person who has the fear of Heaven, his words are heeded.” Rav Nosson added two words: “sof sof devarav nishma’in — eventually, his words will be heeded.”

Almost three decades after Rav Nosson’s passing, his talmid muvhak stood in front of a crowd that had, bli ayin hara, swelled well past its humble beginnings as living proof of his rebbi’s prescient words.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1099)