We continue with yet another beautiful story of an Adam Gadol, told over by Rabbi Geldwerth and printed in a pamphlet that was given out the Torah U’Mesorah convention.
Rav Shmuel Auerbach z’lb, the great Rosh Yeshiva of Yerushalayim and son of the famed Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, used to visit widows, to give them hizuk, as did many Gedolim.
Once on Shabbat HaGadol (the Shabbat before Pesach), he saw a boy standing in the house of a widow and asked him a question about his learning, in order to draw him in, but the boy burst out crying. He didn’t know the Gemara and was taken by surprise. What Rav Shmuel Auerbach thought would give the boy strength backfired.
The rabbi trembled. Causing distress to an orphan is a very serious sin.
He asked the boy’s mother if there were any toys in the house. The widow answered that everything had already been packed away in preparation for Pesach.
The rabbi looked around the house and saw that there was a ball on the porch and he rushed out to get it. He took it and started to play soccer with a boy, back and forth under the table. The boy was elated, and the rabbi left.
His students later asked their Rosh Yeshiva why he had been playing soccer with this boy- And on Shabbat?
He answered that he had to ask mechila from this young boy, for causing him pain. But the boy was too young to ask mechila from as of yet. At his young age, he lacked the understanding and knowledge necessary to forgive.
“But I can try to make him forget,” the rabbi said. “When the boy looks back at today, what will he remember? Will he remember that he forgot the Gemarah or will he remember that Shmuel Auerbach played soccer with him under the
table?”
These stories make you shiver. This is the power of an Adam Gadol. Look at what they were capable of doing with their concern and sensitivity!
There is a great rabbi today in Eretz Yisrael, Rabbi Asher Arieli. He has one of the biggest shiurim in the world, in the Mir Yeshiva in Israel.
On Friday afternoons, he learns with the orphans in his neighborhood. He is a busy rabbi, with a lot to do but he knows that orphans have no one to learn with.
This is the sensitivity and greatness of Anashim Gedolim, and we can only strive and learn from their sensitivity, B’ezrat Hashem.