Sometimes it’s the little things you don’t attach much significance to that make the biggest impact

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ermit me to share two amazing stories with you, both of which I heard recently. The first story is about a gadol of our own times whose loss we are still mourning — Rav Aharon Leib Steinman ztz”l. After making some inquiries to verify its authenticity, I am repeating it here as I received it:

A bochur from a chareidi family in Bnei Brak unfortunately left Jewish observance behind and went to live with a nonreligious cousin. His spiritual health continued to deteriorate, and eventually he became involved with a non-Jewish girl and planned to marry her. Even his irreligious cousin felt this was going too far, but was unsuccessful in his attempts to persuade the young man to break off the engagement. His cousin did convince him, though, that if he was going to cut himself off from the Jewish People and from his family, he should at least go home and tell his parents in a frank, face-to-face conversation about his intentions. The young man agreed, and invited himself to spend Shabbos with his parents “on his own terms.” He spent Shabbos evening smoking out on the porch, and most of the day in his room on the phone.

In the afternoon, his father came in and told him he was going to a shiur, to be given by Rav Aharon Leib Steinman. Perhaps his son would like to join him? Surprisingly, the bochur agreed.

After the shiur, his father brought him to Rav Steinman to say gut Shabbos. He mentioned to the gadol that, sadly, his son was no longer keeping Shabbos. Rav Steinman looked at the young man and asked him, “How long have you not been keeping Shabbos?”

“Two years,” the son answered.

“And during that time, did you ever think about doing teshuvah?”

“Yes, about four times.”

“And for how long,” Rav Steinman asked, “did you think about teshuvah on each of these occasions?”

“For about ten minutes, I guess,” the young man said.

“Ah, so it adds up to a total of about 40 minutes over the last two years that you had hirhurei teshuvah, and during that time you were ‘in the place where baalei teshuvah stand’ — the place where ‘tzaddikim gemurim cannot stand.’ I envy you that. Shabbat shalom.”

After Shabbos, the bochur returned to his cousin’s apartment. Rav Steinman’s words continued to haunt him. He broke off the engagement, and from there his life changed direction. Today, baruch Hashem, that young man is a Torah-observant Jew.

Later, he was asked what made him choose to go to that shiur. He’d spent the whole day being mechallel Shabbos and suddenly he was willing to go hear a shiur? He answered that when he was a cheder boy in fourth grade, his class went to Rav Steinman to be tested. The melamed had requested that the Rav make the questions easy, and Rav Steinman accommodated by asking things that any cheder boy would know. Each boy, in turn, received a candy from the Rav upon answering the Rav’s question. Only one boy couldn’t answer the question he was asked — this very bochur. Rav Aharon Leib asked the boy an easier question, and again, he didn’t know the answer. Seeing that learning was hard for this boy, the gadol asked him an even easier question, but this time, too, the boy couldn’t answer. At the end of the bechinah, every boy had a candy except for this one boy. As the whole class filed out of the room in awe, Rav Steinman motioned to that boy to come to him. When they were alone, the Rav said to him, “For Torah and Yiddishkeit, we receive a reward according to how hard we try, not according to the results. All the other boys tried hard to answer one question, so they got one candy. But you tried hard to answer three questions, so you get three.” And with a smile, he handed the boy three candies.

That’s the story. And in the fullest sense, that’s the whole story — of how a man became a gadol hador, rabban shel kol bnei hagolah. What’s our knee-jerk response when we encounter such a blatant display of chillul Shabbos? Antipathy? Criticism? Even if we try not to show it? But as the Mishnah teaches us to be dan es kol ha’adam l’chaf zechus — to look at the person as a whole and find merit in him, Rav Aharon Leib didn’t linger over the fact that the boy was mechallel Shabbos, but chose instead to look for the meritorious aspect of his situation, and by doing so, he brought him to do teshuvah. The end of the story throws the childhood memory into high relief, showing us a clear image of a true mechanech, who finds a way to lift up a child when he fails and makes sure he doesn’t walk out of his room feeling like a loser.

AND NOW, ANOTHER STORY in which one small choice saved a life. Some readers may have heard it already, but its message is so powerful that it bears repeating.

A man was driving along an intercity route, and to pass the time, he put a Torah shiur in the tape deck. While he was listening, he decided to pass a heavy freight truck on the road ahead of him. Just as he began to steer his car around the big vehicle, he suddenly heard the siren of a police car. Startled, he quickly steered back into line behind the truck and slowed down. A second later, another truck came barreling along at high speed in the opposite direction, and it was clear that if he had gone ahead and tried to pass the truck in front of him, he would have been crushed to death between the two trucks. The siren had saved his life. Any moment now the police car would signal him to stop, and he’d probably get a ticket.

But where was the police car? He kept glancing in his rearview mirror, expecting the cops to catch up with him, but they were nowhere in sight.

He couldn’t understand how that had happened. The siren had sounded loud and clear, and was obviously very close by. Only later did he discover that the siren he’d heard was coming from… the tape he’d been playing in the car. Twenty years earlier, when the shiur was recorded, a police car had passed by just outside the beis medrash with its siren wailing, and that unintentionally recorded siren had saved his life. The driver was awestruck and overwhelmed — HaKadosh Baruch Hu had prepared his salvation two decades in advance.

And here is the punch line: When the driver told over this incredulous story, he remarked that when he’d gotten into his car that morning, he’d considered for a moment whether to listen to music or to put on a Torah tape. “Music might have been more entertaining, but then I decided that the beginning of a day should be framed with Torah.”

What was the lesson? The obvious one, said the driver, is the power of Torah — that even an old recorded shiur literally has the power to save a man from death. I would add that we never know just how crucial a seemingly small choice may prove to be. (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 713)