Seeing a group of children playing in the streets of Brooklyn while speaking Yiddish in the early 1900’s was not strange. Immigration to the United States from Eastern Europe was quite common.
What was unusual was the very dark skin color of the Yiddish speaking kids.
This prompted the wealthy Jewish businessman to strike up a conversation with the children. He found out that they lived in the basement of a crowded apartment house and helped their father stoke the coal furnace that heated the building. Their skin was darkened from coal dust that stuck to it. Quite obviously they were a destitute family.
The generous hearted well to do Jew asked to meet their parents. The father explained that he was struggling with making ends meet as he kept the sanctity of Shabbat and wouldn’t work from Friday sundown till Saturday night after nightfall.
Week after week, job after job, he was warned ‘if you don’t show up on Saturday, don’t bother coming on Monday as you are fired’. By managing the heating in the apartment building he was granted a meager form of roof over his head by the custodian of the building.
The philanthropic Jew was sympathetic and offered to give $500 to the family to help them get into their own apartment.
The poor Jew looked his would be benefactor in the eye and asked him ‘do you keep Shabbat’. To which the wealthy person answered truthfully that he did not. If so, I will not accept your magnanimous gift as it would be disrespectful to the very sanctity of Shabbat that my family works so hard to uphold and preserve.
‘Hashem will continue to provide as He has provided till now’ continued the Shabbat observer.
The would-be-benefactor went home that evening and told his wife about the unusual encounter with the financially struggling family.
The wife of the benefactor spoke up. ‘Do you remember how distressed you were the first time you worked on Shabbat. We felt that we had no choice at that time as we needed to survive. We felt true remorse the first time you went to work on Shabbat and pledged that once things would stabilize, we would go back to observing Shabbat. We are now well to do and it’s time to fulfill our pledge….’
The husband immediately made an inspired decision to start keeping Shabbat.
Excitedly he went back to the family who had refused his money and told them ‘I am now keeping Shabbat, please accept my gift’. To which the pious Jew responded, ‘we would only consider that after you actually keep this coming Shabbat’.
Indeed, the wealthy family kept Shabbat and the poor family received the gift of financial assistance.
This enabled them to get on to their own independent financial feet.
I heard this story this week from the great grandson of the protagonist.
As the saying goes, more than I ‘guard/protect’ the Shabbat, the Shabbat guards and protects me’.
In the 1900’s it was very difficult to find employment and observe Shabbat. Today, thank G-d, employment while keeping Shabbat is much simpler.
Yet, keeping Shabbat always requires effort. Hashem has embedded into the fabric of the world, that doing good things requires effort.
This is not a ‘bug’ rather it is a ‘feature’. Hashem desires our efforts. He wants to give us the gift of ‘earning’ our relationship with Him by investing time, energy and resources in building our relationship with Him.
Let us strengthen and upgrade our observance of the Shabbat.
Start by lighting Shabbat candles in your home before sundown tonight.
(In Bangkok the time is 6:16pm. Check the time in your time zone by clicking here.
Our Sages promised that if all of the Jewish people would keep even just one Shabbat, Mashiach would come NOW.
Let you and I do our best to make this a reality as speedily as possible.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yosef Kantor
PS. in Tzvi Freemans words:
Meaningful Opposition
People think that G‑d first made a world and then gave us instructions to follow, so we won’t mess it up. The truth is, the instructions came first, and the world was designed as the venue to carry them out.
Therefore, to say that anything in the world could oppose its Creator’s will is an absurdity. There can be no opponents to the purpose of creation—only meaningful challenges.