He told the Jew, “Welcome to the Daily Holy Story.”
About a hundred years ago, in the city of Yerushalayim (Jerusalem), the great Rabbi Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld was the rabbi of Yerushalayim. In his time, they began doing a lot of construction outside the walls of Yerushalayim, in the neighborhood of Yemin Moshe and its surroundings. They needed a lot of people for construction. In those days, brick factories were not as modern as they are today. They used to bring large stones that had not been carved or broken for the building projects, and each stone had to be carved out of a large stone. There was a Jew who was a Yerushalmi (Jerusalemite) and was very skilled in this field. Every day, he would come to the construction site, receive the giant stones, and begin cutting them into smaller bricks.
One day, without noticing, he moved a large stone toward himself to cut it. He didn’t notice that behind it was another large stone. When he pulled the stone toward him, the other stone fell straight onto his leg and injured him very, very badly. His leg began to swell and become infected, and he was in tremendous pain. When he went to the doctors, they told him that if they could not overcome the sickness in his leg, it could cause an infection throughout his body and endanger his life. Therefore, he needed an emergency operation on his leg to save it. But in those days, there were no doctors or surgeons in Jerusalem who knew how to do this surgery because it was very complicated. They used to send people outside the land of Israel. The doctors advised him to go to Vienna, where there were professors skilled at performing surgery on the leg.
Of course, it was very expensive to travel to Vienna, Austria, and have the surgery. Through Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, they arranged a collection for this man to save his leg in Vienna, Austria. He went to Vienna with the money. When he got there, he saw a very prominent professor who knew about the leg. The professor told him it was more complicated than they had thought. Of course, the travel hadn’t helped his leg, and the cost of the operation was much higher than the money he had collected. He couldn’t go back and collect more money because he had already collected money for his leg. He couldn’t send a letter to Yerushalayim to ask for more money. With no other choice, he stayed in Vienna, Austria. He didn’t know what to do. He had no money for the operation, his leg was hurting him, and his whole body was in danger. What was he going to do?
In the meantime, he had to find a little hotel or a room to rent. He found one in a corner of the city at a cheap price. To pay for everything he needed, he found a little job cutting stones. Of course, day by day, his leg hurt more and more, and he didn’t know what to do. One day, he was sitting on the streets of Vienna, cutting stones. It was very difficult work, and his leg was really, really hurting. The pain was unbearable. He started thinking about his family back in Yerushalayim. What was he going to do now? What was going to happen to his family? In those days, there were no telephones, faxes, or emails, and he had all kinds of thoughts. When he realized that he had no money for the operation and nobody to save him, tears began to flow down his cheeks nonstop. In the middle of the street, while he was working, he kept crying.
Suddenly, a beautiful wagon with three big horses came toward him. And obviously, it was a very rough day, because a very wealthy man was in that wagon, dressed in royal clothing with golden buttons. He had nothing but royalty on him. At first, the man with the injured leg didn’t pay attention to the wagon because he was busy with his work and his crying. But the royal person in the wagon looked at him and saw him crying. He sent his men to investigate why the man was crying. The man’s servants started speaking to him. He didn’t understand them, and they didn’t understand him; they didn’t speak the same language. The royal man in the wagon realized that this was a Jew, so he went to call the translator to explain what his problem was. When the translator came, the Jew told him everything: how he had come from Jerusalem, how his leg was injured, and how he urgently needed an operation. But he didn’t even have half the money he needed for the operation, and he didn’t know what to do. He showed them his injured leg, and he kept crying.
When the royal person in the wagon saw the problem, he immediately took out a piece of paper and his quill pen, wrote some words in Latin, signed it, gave it to the Jew, and commanded him to go to the best hospital in Vienna with the piece of paper. Then he left him alone. The poor Jew didn’t understand a word or half a word of what the note said. He said to himself, “What is this note going to do for me at a hospital? I don’t have any money, and it’s very expensive. Without the money, no hospital will accept me.”
When he arrived at his hotel room that night, he told his host what had happened to him: some royal goy had written him a note to go to a fancy hospital. The host asked to see the note. When he looked at it and read it, he was in shock. The host told him, “You know, this note is from none other than the king, Franz Joseph of Austria. He was a very kind king. He would go out from time to time to see what their needs were. The king is the final word. He wrote you a note here saying that at the fancy hospital, which is only for rich people, they should open their arms to you and take care of you.”
Of course, the Jew quickly went to the very, very expensive hospital, which had the best surgeons and the best doctors money could buy. They received him with great honor and served him. They operated on his leg and cured him. They gave him the most expensive medicines so he could recuperate over a two-week period. When the man saw his great luck and realized that his little request was from the great king of Vienna, none other than Franz Joseph, he began to feel bad and started crying. He could have asked the king for a lot of things. He had young girls to get married. He had great debts. The king could have solved a lot of problems for him.
When he was cured and healthy, he went back to Jerusalem, where they received him with great honor. He went in to see his rabbi, Rabbi Sonnenfeld, and told him the whole story from beginning to end. He began to cry and said, “The king himself came to me, and I didn’t even know that the king was there and asked him for many things that would have solved many problems in my life.”
When Rabbi Sonnenfeld heard the Jew’s words, he started crying and crying and crying. The Jew said to Rabbi Sonnenfeld, “What happened? Rabbi, why are you crying?” The rabbi told him, “You know, many times during the year we have the merit to meet the King, HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself. And what do we do? Sometimes we don’t take the opportunity to meet with the King—for example, in the month of Elul, on Rosh Hashanah, or during the days of Shovavim—when we can meet with the King and get forgiveness from Him and tremendous berachot (blessings). Just as you cried because you didn’t ask the king, we have to cry that when our King, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, meets with us, we should get close to Him and ask Him what we really need. That way, we are blessed for many years to come.” Thank you for listening and have a wonderful, wonderful day.