I am one such story.

I could summarize my eight years in cheder in two words: daydreaming and doodling. Back then the terms ADD and ADHD weren’t in use, but those conditions were alive and well. I am blessed with the first version. Big time. Which means that although I wasn’t jumpy and hyper (missing the “H” in ADHD), I had enormous difficulty focusing my attention for more than a few short minutes on any topic being taught.

In fact, when I was finally clinically tested for ADD many years later, my physician told me he had never encountered such high scores. For that reason I had done quite poorly throughout my years in cheder. My teachers assumed I wasn’t capable and pretty much ignored me while I daydreamed and doodled my years away. I wasn’t hyper, disruptive, or bothersome, so I flew under the radar.

Being a young child, I did not give my lack of academic success much thought, and I was content with drawing pictures all day. I was very artistic and my creations were quite good. My parents would constantly compliment me on my artistic talents, and they would regularly show off my artwork to their friends.

I’m sure my parents were not thrilled with my lack of interest in learning, but they made sure I never felt inadequate, and they tried to build up my self-esteem and self-confidence in many other ways. Thus, my emotional self was not bruised by my unimpressive academic achievements.

At the same time, I’m sure they were davening to Hashem to infuse my heart with the motivation and interest to achieve success in limud haTorah.

In retrospect, I understand that had this situation persisted throughout my years in mesivta and beis medrash, I would likely have become a broken vessel. Sitting in front of a Gemara day in and day out, daydreaming year after year (after filling all the white spaces on every daf with illustrations), does not produce an emotionally healthy individual. A talent for doodling is simply not enough to fill the heart of a yeshivah bochur with self-esteem and a sense of purpose and success.

Baruch Hashem, my parents’ tefillos were indeed answered. Hashem in His loving kindness sent a malach to be at my side.

Although I wasn’t interested in learning, for some reason I decided to go to a very good learning camp in Upstate New York after I graduated eighth grade. There was no logic to this decision. Bored out of my mind daydreaming in front of a Gemara during the school year, why in the world would I want to suffer during the summer months when I was free to do nothing?

But Hashem had other plans for me. That particular summer camp had hired a very special soul as the learning director for my age group. The very first time I met him, I was hypnotized by his magic without fully understanding what was transpiring. It was only much later in life that I was able to look back and appreciate what had transpired that summer.

Reb Kolman had a way of making you feel important just for being yourself. And if you came up with a good question or a good answer, his face shone with such excitement, you felt like a million bucks. He was your mentor, and your trusted friend who looked after you like your older brother. He never talked down to anyone, even a young child. He would not give mussar. He would simply share with you an inspiring vort with such enthusiasm that it was contagious.

I spent my time during the learning sessions in camp the same way I had spent the previous eight years of cheder. I did nothing besides daydreaming and doodling.

A few days into camp, Reb Kolman called me over and said he wanted to talk to me. He told me one of the things he wanted to accomplish over the summer was to review Maseches Negaim (a complicated tractate of Mishnah dealing with the laws of tzaraas). To this end, he wanted to select a few “bochurim baalei kishron” to go through the masechta with him. Being that the day was full of sedorim and programs, he wanted to do this early in the morning before Shacharis. We would be learning in the woods and sipping cups of hot cocoa, which he would bring. As a token of his appreciation for our participation, at the end of the summer he would take our small group of four or five boys to Rav Moshe Feinstein ztz”l for a special brachah.

Why I agreed to this, I have no idea.

I was not excited, to say the least, about learning when it was mandatory, so why would I agree to wake up early while everyone else was sleeping just to do more of the same, voluntarily?

Correction. I have a very good idea. (Actually, several.)

1. Reb Kolman identified me as a baal kishron (intelligent and bright), something none of my rebbeim had ever done. Why should they? I never learned a word. In truth, my father used that term when talking about me many times. But I figured that’s just what parents do to make their children feel good, and to feel good about their children. But now someone who hardly knew me and was not related to me used that term. I felt validated. Deep down I had a feeling I was not stupid. How else would I get 50s and 60s on my tests, when, based on my participation, I should have been getting zeros? And yet, being referred to with that term made me feel like I was ten feet tall.
2. Reb Kolman did not tell me to join the group. He did not try to convince me that it would be good for me. I would not have bought into that. He asked me to do him a favor, to help him review the masechta. Doing a favor for someone I liked and respected was something I could relate to.
3. It was exotic. Waking up in the wee hours of the morning, sipping hot cocoa in the woods, learning a mysterious masechta that hardly anyone knows, with a small elite group of bochurim, to the sound of birds singing their morning prayers in the background.... You really can’t beat that for an exotic experience.
4. And to top it off, it meant being part of a small select group who would have the zechus of receiving a brachah from Reb Moshe, the posek hador!

The combination of all the above successfully sparked my interest, and I agreed.

The entire summer I walked around with my head held high. There were many older beis medrash bochurim and yungeleit in the camp, but I was soon to master a masechta they had probably never opened. I didn’t learn much during the other learning periods, but I made sure never to miss a morning with Reb Kolman. And lo and behold, I was able to listen for the full 25 to 30 minutes of his shiur practically every single day. Moreover, I grasped the content, and I reviewed it regularly.

Toward the end of the summer, when we had finished the whole masechta, Reb Kolman asked if we would be comfortable if he invited the rosh yeshivah (the camp was hosted by and located on the grounds of a yeshivah), to give us an informal bechinah. As we all felt that we knew it quite well, we were agreeable. The rosh yeshivah was (and is) an incredibly sweet man, and after asking us a few questions and seeing that we knew it pretty well, he heaped upon us such praise that we now felt like we were 20 feet tall!

That summer I was transformed. I was a new person. I was full of self-confidence. I started off the summer thinking I would never know how to learn, and in less than two short months, I had a completely different perspective. I realized that if I put my head to learning, I could succeed. I also realized how much I enjoyed it.

The next five or six years were not easy for me. I still had severe ADD. The magical atmosphere that Reb Kolman created for a half hour on those summer mornings, punctuated by sips of cocoa and peppered with enchanting stories on tree stumps in the forest while the birds sang Perek Shirah, could not be recreated by ordinary rebbeim teaching in the context of regular yeshivah sedorim.

Most of my rebbeim were not particularly amused when I refused to go to their shiurim. When they tried to force me to go, I either went to sleep on my desk or brought some seforim and learned something else while they taught. Not the best way to endear yourself to your rebbeim.

They were all good people and they all meant well, but under normal circumstances, their sharp words of rebuke could have crushed me.

“You are a baal gaaveh!”

“You have no derech eretz!”

“You will remain an am ha’aretz your whole life if you never listen to shiurim!”

Of course I don’t blame them — they were unaware of the condition called ADD, and so was I. They interpreted my lack of interest in their shiurim as gaaveh and chutzpah, but it wasn’t. It was a handicap. But it was also a gift: ADD minds are often exceptionally creative, and are able to think out of the box and discover solutions hidden from ordinary minds.

At that point in my life I had no idea why it was virtually impossible for me to sit and listen to shiurim, but one thing I did know was that if I mastered Maseches Negaim, then I could master other areas of Torah as well. I was not a broken vessel or a failure.

I was empowered for life by Reb Kolman, and criticism did not break me. On the contrary, it emboldened me, and I simply allowed all those negative comments to enter through one ear and go straight out the other. I had already experienced the sweet mussar of Reb Kolman — the kind that is not directed down at you but is rather shared with you. When Reb Kolman talked mussar, he was speaking to himself and invited you to listen in and share his excitement and inspiration. Reb Kolman had afforded me the opportunity to taste the sweetness of Torah, and I knew I could succeed in mastering portions of it.

Throughout my teens I continued to follow the model that worked for me that summer with Reb Kolman. I would choose topics that held my interest long enough for me to master them. Later in life, when I discovered the scientific description on my unique brain type, and I read a lot about ADD, I learned that this is exactly how experts advise ADDers to succeed.

I sat and learned with a vengeance. I completely ignored what the yeshivah was learning and chose the sugyos that interested me, and I mastered them on my own. My ADD brain also prodded me to venture into hashkafah and machshavah. Needless to say, the hanhalah was not pleased to behold a bochur learning Kuzari or Michtav MeEliyahu during first seder, but how can you punish a boy who sits a whole day in beis medrash and learns Torah?

I went on to master many sugyos since that memorable summer, and I published several important Torah essays. I was even personally asked by the Lubavitcher Rebbe to write up some of his chiddushim. And it is all thanks to the sensitivity and caring heart of one very special Yid.

Although I was never able to finish a single masechta b’iyun from cover to cover, over the ensuing decades I successfully managed to “conquer” and own scores of sugyos in halachah and aggadah, one by one. A little at a time.

A couple of years ago I bumped into Reb Kolman in Lakewood after we hadn’t been in contact for decades. Without missing a beat he told me, “Reb Isser Zalman, I would like to share with you one of the most important lessons in avodas Hashem that I learned from Rebbe Nachman of Breslov — ‘A bissel iz oich gut [A little bit is also good]!’ ”

How Reb Kolman was able to grasp the nuances of the condition of a 13-year-old so quickly and to successfully craft a program that would work for me, and how he figured out how to present it in a way that would be attractive to me — I will never know. Was it incredible intuition? Or perhaps due to his unbounded love and desire to help another Yid succeed, Hashem put the right formula in his mind.

Regardless, the one thing I do know is that I owe him my life.

Thank you, Reb Kolman.

May your family find nechamah in the knowledge that your spirit lives on in the hearts of the thousands you have touched in so many ways and may your soul be bound in the Bond of Eternal Life under the wings of the Shechinah, until we merit “v’hakitzu v’ranenu shochnei afar, v’atah b’socham, bimheirah v’yameinu, amen.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 742)

Rabbi Isser Zalman Weisberg is an author, lecturer, and columnist at Chabad.org.