Welcome back to the Holy Story, Daily Holy Story. There was a yeshiva in Moscow by the name of Torat Chaim. One day, a boy by the name of Boris walked into the yeshiva and sat on a chair with a shtender (lectern), just sitting there. Every day, he walked in, sat there, and did nothing. After about a week, the Rosh Yeshiva went over to him and asked, “Can I help you? Do you need anything?” Boris was silent; he didn’t say a word.
For the next few days, the same thing happened. He walked in and just sat in the yeshiva doing nothing. Finally, the Rosh Yeshiva went over to him and said, “Excuse me, but there’s a student who doesn’t have anywhere to sit. We need your seat. Can you please get up and leave?” Boris didn’t pay attention or respond. He turned to the Rosh Yeshiva, who raised his voice: “Excuse me, young man. Can you please leave? We need the seat. You’re not doing anything.” All of a sudden, Boris burst into tears. He turned to the Rosh Yeshiva and said, “Let me tell you my story.”
“One day, I walked into a cafe in Moscow, sat down, and minded my own business, sipping hot coffee. All of a sudden, the KGB came into the cafe and arrested everybody, including me. They took me straight to jail. I sat there for two, three weeks, with no idea why I was there. After three weeks, they took me out and brought me to the courthouse. They sat me before the judge, and he looked at me and asked, ‘Do you know why you’re in jail?’ I looked at him. I said, ‘I have no idea.’ The judge turned to the officers and said, ‘Put the man back in jail.’ I started crying: ‘What do you want from me? I don’t know what’s going on.’ There was no response. ‘Take him to jail.’ They took me back to jail. I sat there for a month, a month and a half. Finally, somebody came over to me and said, ‘Do you know why you were in jail?’ I said to him, ‘No. Why am I in jail?’ He told me, ‘Well, the KGB found out there were four guys they’d been looking for for the last half a year, and they found out that those four guys were in the cafe. So they decided to arrest the four guys and everybody else who was in the cafe, suspecting that maybe you were connected to them and were also a criminal.’
“The next time they took me to court, the judge looked at me and said, ‘Do you know why you’re in jail?’ I explained to him that I understood the suspicion that maybe I was connected to the criminals, and I convinced the judge that I had no connection to those criminals. So he let me go. When I left the courthouse, I realized that to have bad neighbors is to have a bad reputation. So I decided I had to walk into the yeshiva, where there were good people, and associate myself with neighbors who were good. That way, maybe he’ll rub off on me.”
The Rosh Yeshiva was so moved by Boris’s words that he let him stay in the yeshiva. Little by little, he started to learn, and he became one of the best talmidei chachamim (Torah scholars) in the yeshiva. So we see the moral of the story is: Tell me who your neighbors are, and I’ll tell you who you are. Always have good neighbors. Thank you for listening, and have a wonderful, wonderful day.