“In yeshivah there’s no such thing as sitting around all day doing nothing. We serve Hashem!”
The Background
I heard this story at a wedding from my old friend Rabbi Mordechai Pitem, an incredible mechanech and all-around great person. Here is his story, in his own words.
Rabbi Pitem's Story:
T
he other day, I went to sign the lease on a Jerusalem apartment that I was renting for my newlywed daughter. The owner was a Sephardic Yid with a ready smile. After we finished our business, he examined me closely.
“You know, you look familiar.”
We tried to figure out where we had met each other. The first few leads came up dry, but when I asked him about his childhood, we nailed it — we had been neighbors in the same Romema apartment building where he had grown up.
By this point I recognized him, too, and the years fell away. I reminded him how we first met.
“You and I met the day I moved into the building,” I told him. “When our van pulled up, you were standing there, and you helped me schlep our suitcases. Do you remember that?”
“Yes, I was seventeen,” he said. “Not frum. Just a regular kid hanging around.”
As we stood there reminiscing, I had a sudden flashback.
A
ll those years ago, he and I were having a random streetside conversation, and it came up that I knew Rabbi Uri Zohar. That got him excited —Rabbi Zohar had been a famous actor who became a baal teshuvah. Everyone in Israel knew the story.
“You know Uri Zohar? He’s a real star!”
“Maybe he was. Now he sits and learns in yeshivah. Do you want to meet him?”
I almost had to peel him off the sidewalk.
“Who, me? I would love that, if you could set that up!”
I told him I would see what I could do. Later, I asked Reb Uri if he could meet with a certain 17-year-old chiloni Sephardi boy. It turned out that Reb Uri often passed through Romema at a specific time and he could stop and schmooze with this young man. So we set it up.
Reb Uri was not one to waste time. He got straight to the point.
“What are you doing with yourself these days?” Reb Uri asked my daughter’s future landlord.
“Nothing much. I’m going to the army soon.”
“Why don’t you spend some time in yeshivah first?”
The 17-year-old snickered. “What, I should sit around all day doing nothing?”
That made Reb Uri mad. “Excuse me,” he said, “In yeshivah there’s no such thing as sitting around all day doing nothing. We serve Hashem!”
That started a back-and-forth between them. I left them to it — and we left that neighborhood very soon after. I hadn’t spoken to that young man since that day — until now, when he became my daughter’s new landlord.
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What happened after that conversation with Reb Uri?” I asked him.
“We made up to learn together once a week — Orchos Tzaddikim,” he said. “Then I went to the army, and I found myself thinking that maybe I should have given yeshivah a chance. When I was released, I went to the US and found my place at a yeshivah called Kol Yaakov in Monsey. A lot of Israeli baalei teshuvah learned there. Today I’m a chareidi Jew.”
After we parted ways, I pondered the turn of events in this man’s life. The reason he was now a religious Jew was because I had done a small thing and arranged for him to meet Reb Uri Zohar.
True, Reb Uri had taken it from there — but it came together because I saw the chance to make a connection. So often, the little things you do can end up changing a life.—
