As told to Margie Pensak

I was a little boy when my cheder rebbi berated me in front of my classmates. “Shmuel Gitler, what’s going to be with you?” he screamed.

Then he answered his own question. “Nothing is going to be with you!”

That was a lesson I learned very well. Programmed to think that nothing was going to become of me, at age 14 I decided to leave yeshivah for good. I was in good (or rather bad) company. I had a group of friends on the fringe who’d also suffered through the system. Most went off the derech; some are in jail.

But I managed to disappoint my rebbi in the end, thanks to an uncle who persuaded me that something could become of me. I may have left yeshivah, but I made a conscious decision to do something positive with my life, something that would make a difference.

I got my first taste of chesed at the age of eight, when I started helping out my local branch of Ezer Mizion’s food distribution program. It was fun, it kept me on the move, and it gave me a sense of purpose.

When I was 15, I happened to be in the room when someone came to visit a shut-in. Watching his face transform from stark loneliness to soft warmth sparked something in me. That scene was my inspiration at 16 to call up a few friends — all older than me — to help me cheer up a person who was sick at home. Determined to do it right, I recruited a guy in the neighborhood who sings well and managed to borrow a microphone too.

As we gathered outside the building, the entourage laughed in amazement and disbelief. “How could a little kid like you arrange such a big thing?” they marveled.

I shrugged and proceeded up the stairs to the apartment. “You can laugh at me,” I said as I knocked on the door, “but my mission is to make a sick person happy.”

I realized that I had found my passion and made it my full-time focus, expanding my “clients” from private homes to nursing homes and hospitals. In the hospitals I met medical clowns, and fascinated by their tools and skills, I decided to take a medical clowning course.

On the side, I found all kinds of jobs so I could save up money for my real passion. Any money I made went toward purchasing the tools and paraphernalia I needed to cheer up sick people. Eventually, I amassed a large collection of props, toys, nosh, costumes, and musical instruments. My grand purchase was two huge, blowup costumes — one is a chassidic rebbe that is so tall (four meters, about 13 feet tall), it can’t fit in a regular building.

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he patient who had the biggest effect on me was ten-year-old Eliyahu a”h, who was suffering from cancer. I was everything to Eliyahu — his father, mother, friend, doctor, you name it. Every day for months, until he was niftar on his birthday, I would make the journey by bus — a two-hour round trip — from my home in Kiryat Sefer to his in Yerushalayim to administer his medication. He would only take it from me.

I put my heart and soul into fulfilling Eliyahu’s every wish. He wanted to go to Uman, I took him. He wanted to go on a boat ride and jeep outings, we went. He wanted a sefer Torah to be written, I took him to Rav Chaim Kanievsky and arranged for one to be written in his honor.

Eliyahu actually planned his own hachnassas sefer Torah. The day before, he called me up and made me promise him that he would be allowed to give out sweets and torches. He also requested that I carry him on my shoulders for the entire four-hour event, so that despite his being short, he could take in the fanfare that would transpire “above his head.” I carried him for the entire procession and dancing that followed, aside from a few minutes when someone asked to hold him. He was so seriously sick, he fell asleep while on my shoulders.

Each time Eliyahu wanted something, I made sure he got it. Then he made an interesting request.

“Shmuel, what’s the name of your organization?” he asked.

“Organization, what do you mean?”

“You’re running a chesed organization,” he said. “Give it a name. Make it official.”

Well, I had acquiesced to every other request Shmuel made; I wasn’t going to refuse him this time. My passion got a name: Simcha T’Natzayach — Happiness Will Triumph.

When Eliyahu passed away, I was crushed. For so many months, I’d woken up and gone to sleep thinking of him. Rav Meir Sirota, the rav of my shul in Brachfeld and a member of the Eidah Hachareidis in Yerushalayim, gave me the chizuk to carry on. He also gave me an important piece of advice: “You can only keep doing this if you don’t get so emotionally enmeshed,” he said. “As a volunteer, you will find these intensely close relationships too much to bear. Instead, visit your patients, try to spread simchah, be there for them — and then make sure you can leave and carry on with life.”

That very wise advice helped me carry on, and as I added more volunteers to my roster, I tried to make sure they kept it in mind as well. In order to keep volunteering and keep spreading simchah, we need to find the right balance in our own lives.

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wo years ago, I married Shifra, an amazingly positive and supportive young woman who works with special-needs kids and backs me in all my chesed efforts. She knew from the start what she was signing up for: a life filled with laughter and giving but not much material wealth. To give you an idea of how special she is, the 250,000 shekels (almost $100,000) I had earned while working as a bochur had already been invested in costumes and equipment; there was no money to put toward buying us a home.

In addition to my costumes and props, my collection now included popcorn machines, a confetti machine, helium tanks for blowing up balloons, and even a generator for venues without access to electricity.

We began our lives together in a rented 40-square-meter apartment that doubles as my storage room — or rather, the storage room doubles as our apartment; with all the space accorded to the costumes and equipment, we have about 12 square meters to live in.

But from the little apartment, I’ve managed to build a small empire — an empire of volunteers who use their time and talent to cheer up the sick. I now work with 11 groups of handpicked volunteers across the country and get an average of 30 requests a day for home visits, in addition to our steady three hospital visits a day. Most of my volunteers are yeshivah bochurim who learn much of the day and do chesed at night and during bein hazmanim. There are girls and women who volunteer, too. All of my volunteers need to be sensitive, respectful of hospital regulations, and strong enough to endure the regular sight of very sick people connected to machines and tubes. And they need to be able to see the humanity in every person — young, old, Jewish, or not. We go to every ward, to all ages and stages and try to make a difference.

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ur volunteerism is custom tailored to each patient. A little Israeli girl unable to eat since birth sought treatment in Boston. Her surgery and therapy were successful, and when she returned home, the former mayor of Beit Shemesh, Moshe Abutbul, accompanied by many Simcha T’Natzayach volunteers, were at Ben-Gurion Airport to greet her.

An eight-month-old girl who got scorched by a hot water urn was not responsive to anybody or anything, until I started singing and she started clapping. It contributed to her healing.

I get a special satisfaction from fulfilling “dream requests.” One kid wanted a tablet, another a camera, others, a request for a visit from a favorite performer. One boy wanted to have his seventh birthday party on a city bus. I pulled off the birthday of his dreams, arranging for a bus with the number seven filled with colorful balloons, a birthday cake, and a band, to drive through his hometown. It stopped along the route so partying family and friends aboard could get out and dance with passersby.

To celebrate the birthday of a seriously ill boy who loved policemen, I arranged a trip to the Jerusalem police station. He got to meet the police commander and sit in a police car. We gave him a birthday cake and an honorary policeman certificate. Everyone at the station really played the part; it was very emotional.

Simcha T’Natzayach has turned into a full-time “job” for me, although it is not a paid one. The boy who was the class “failure” is now managing a volunteer staff of 200 and a yearly budget of some 300,000 shekels (just under $100,000). The boy with “no future” was gifted a car by concerned volunteers who value my time, so I could get to the hospitals more easily. And the boy who was once termed a “nothing” gets the most rewarding feedback every day, from people whose lives he’s enhancing and transforming.

I often find myself having this imaginary one-sided conversation going on in my head. “Rebbi, look at me. Do you see what I’m doing with my life? Something did become of me. Chesed is my job—my only job. I am spreading simchah and building spirits day and night. I am a success!”

My practical message I have for boys everywhere: if you find that learning is not for you as I did, do chesed, find your niche, make a difference. Figure out where you can contribute to the klal, and build upon that. If you are getting the kind of message from your rebbi that I got from mine, learn from me what you can be.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 747)