“From the time of my bar mitzvah, I never slept in a bed except for Shabbos, and I attribute that to why I was saved”

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’ve written many times about how makpid Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky was on the middah of emes. He would often repeat that when he was a young child, as early as “when I was able to control my thoughts, I made sure never to say anything that was not true.”

He once shared that when he was a young child in cheder, there was someone who had taken something that belonged to another boy, and the rebbi asked each boy in turn if he had taken it. When it was the young future Reb Yaakov’s turn, the rebbi asked if he had taken it, and he said he had not.

“I don’t believe you,” the rebbi responded, and he gave him a potch. Eighty years later, Reb Yaakov told me he was mochel the rebbi immediately for the undeserved potch.

“However,” he continued, “for the fact that the rebbi did not understand my nature, that I am unable to say something that’s not true, for that I am not mochel.”

When I shared this story at a public forum, someone came over to me and shared a story in turn. This young fellow, who had originally learned with Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky in Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, once escorted Reb Yaakov home on a Friday night when he was in Boro Park for Shabbos.

On the way, they bumped into the Satmar Rebbe, who was in Boro Park for Shabbos as well, coming home from his tish. The two gedolim greeted each other warmly, and the Rebbe explained to Reb Yaakov that the date carried great significance for him. On this day, right before Shavuos, the Nazis yemach shemam v’zichram entered Hungary, and many of the surviving chassidim say Kaddish on this date for their relatives who were taken and never heard from again.

Then the Satmar Rebbe turned to Reb Yaakov, and asked him, “Where were you during the war?”

“I was in Toronto,” Reb Yaakov answered.

The Rebbe asked him, “In what zechus do you think that you were saved?”

Reb Yaakov answered him immediately, “Without any question, because from the time that I had control of my thoughts and faculties, I never said anything that wasn’t the truth. That was the reason that I believe I was spared.”

Now Reb Yaakov asked the Rebbe the same question. “And what does the Rebbe feel was the reason that he was saved when so many others were not?”

The Rebbe answered immediately as well. “From the time of my bar mitzvah, I never slept in a bed except for Shabbos, and I attribute that to why I was saved.”

When I shared this with a friend, my summer neighbor Reb Yossel Tabak, he shared with me a fascinating anecdote. He said that he once went to visit Reb Yaakov in Miami Beach, where he spent the winter months in his later years. Reb Yaakov seemed a bit disturbed, and explained to Reb Yossel what had just happened.

During his stays in Miami, Reb Yaakov would usually stay in the Crown Hotel, whose proprietor did everything he could to make Reb Yaakov comfortable, treating him with the great respect he so richly deserved. On this visit, after having stayed in the hotel for several days, Reb Yaakov approached the owner, who immediately realized something was wrong.

“Does the Rosh Yeshivah need anything?” he asked.

“Well, now that you’re asking,” Reb Yaakov replied, “my room has not been tended to since I arrived and I find it a bit disturbing.” The proprietor of the hotel was aghast.

He ran to the woman in charge of the hotel’s maintenance and said, “I don’t understand. Don’t you have someone cleaning the rabbi’s room every day?”

“Of course, we clean the rooms every day,” the woman responded. “However, the last time we had a great rabbi staying here, you told me to give him special treatment. Yet every time we went into his room in the morning, we saw the bed had not been slept in. So when you told me a great rabbi was staying here again, I assumed that we didn’t have to go in to make the bed!”

That great rabbi was the Satmar Rebbe.

True to form, after his bar mitzvah, the Satmar Rebbe never slept in a bed except on Shabbos. Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky never said something that wasn’t true from when he was very young. And those are the reasons to which these two great tzaddikim attributed their longevity and their survival from the horrific war that annihilated 6 million of our brothers and sisters.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1096)