I spent this past Shabbat in the Yeshiva Kol Yaakov with the great Rosh Yeshiva Chacham Yehuda Ades, and I merited to sit by his table. That afternoon in the yeshiva, while looking for a sefer in the Kol Yaakov library ( which is quite large) I stumbled upon a sefer on the Bet Halevi that I had been looking for, for years. One of the wonderful stories in the Sefer is the following:
The Bet Halevi, who was the leader of his generation, was on his way to a meeting of great Gedolim, a meeting he was supposed to be chairing. They sent a coach and driver to take him there, along with fur coats and blankets for the Rabbi and his aide, due to the harsh winter. They also sent money and food for the trip… anything he’d need was sent from the wealthy town, in order to enable him to travel to the meeting. On the way, he stopped at an inn where they met a gentile farmer who sneered sarcastically, “Oh, I see a rabbi..look at all the furs you’re dressed in. It’s a shame they don’t take care of their people the way they take care of their rabbi.” The rabbi asked what he meant. The man said, “You don’t care about your fellow Jews. I live in a town about 30 km away, and there is a Jew there- if not for the fact that his neighbors give him some food, he and his family would starve. He is sick and he does not have money for the doctor, and nobody cares about him. You just don’t care about each other.“
The Bet Halevi said that surely this wasn’t the case, that perhaps nobody had been aware of the situation. “But now that we know about him, we will take care of him. Where is he?”
The farmer told the Bet Halevi exactly where this man lived, and the Bet Halevi instructed the driver to take a detour, to go visit this sick man. The aide protested, saying that all the leaders of the generation were waiting for them. The Bet Halevi apologized, and said he’d make it quick, but it was pikuach nefesh/saving a life. The aide and rabbi each tugged the ropes of the horse in a different direction until the aide finally agreed to go where the Rabbi wanted.
When they got to the poor man’s house, they saw holes in the windows and a leaky roof. The house was freezing and the children sat huddled in the corner, shivering. The man was laying in bed with a high fever and his wife didn’t know what to do. The Bet Halevi immediately took action. He told his aide to go to the neighbors to find a local handyman. When the handyman came he instructed him to get some helpers to fix the windows and the roof and to get wood for the fireplace to warm the house. They immediately got to work.
The Bet Halevi asked the wife whether they had any nourishing fluids to give her husband, as he wasn’t eating. She said she didn’t, so he instructed his aide, who was also a shochet, to slaughter a chicken to make chicken soup. The Bet Halevi pried the man’s mouth open with a spoon, to feed him the soup. He stayed with the man all night, and slowly but surely the man opened his mouth to take some soup. When it was time for Shahrit the next morning, the Bet Halevi told his aide to take over, and he left. He returned fifteen minutes later. It was the fastest Shachrit the aide ever saw. The Bet Halevi then resumed his care of the man, doing everything necessary, until later that day when he finally felt that the man was out of danger. He then took all the food that was supplied for his trip and gave it to the family. He left the fur coat for the man to use until he got better, and he gave them everything he could to help, other than the bare necessities that they would need to continue the trip, and he left. He finally arrived at the meeting, a few days late…
The story picks up a few months later when a tall well-dressed man came to the Bet Halevi’s home, asking if the Bet Halevi recognized him. The Bet Halevi said, “Of course I recognize you. You are the man that was sick. What brings you here?”
The man said that he had come to return the fur coat, but the Bet Halevi told him to keep it, that he needed it. The man replied that he was no longer poor and that, “It says Tov Eyin Hu Mevorach/A man with a good eye gives blessings, and you blessed me that I should be successful. You gave me money and there was beracha in it. My wife took the money and bought wheat, which she then sold in the market. She bought more wheat and before we know it, we had a successful wheat business.” And the rest is history.
Look how a Gadol B’Yisrael stops everything he is doing. He knows what is really important.
He doesn’t let politics, or the larger, more global, community work come before a specific person in need.
Have a wonderful day.