Once, Rabbi Reuven Karlinstein asked the famous Maggid (preacher), Rabbi Shalom Schwadron, “Tell me, Rabbi, how does one put a neshamah (soul) into a person?” Rabbi Shalom answered, “Rabbi Reuven, thousands of years ago, when the world was created, Kayin was trying to kill Hevel. He didn’t know how to do it, because nobody had ever been killed. So Kayin started hitting Hevel’s body. He hit him without any mercy. He cut his fingers. He cut his arms. But Hevel was still alive. So even though Hevel didn’t die, he was really suffering from what Kayin had done to him. What did HaKadosh Baruch Hu do? He sent a bird that went and cut the neck of another bird and killed it. When Kayin saw that, he rushed to cut the neck of his brother, Hevel, and shortly thereafter, Hevel passed away. So Rav Shalom told Rav Reuven, from then on we know how to take a neshamah out of a person. How to put a neshamah into a person, we don’t know. But he added that sometimes a person never knows how much influence his words have on somebody else’s neshamah. Sometimes one word, one vort (short Torah thought), or even one joke can make a tremendous difference.”
Then Rav Shalom started telling Rav Reuven, “The story happened with me. Once upon a time, I was visiting my daughter in Kiryat Gat. In the middle of the Shabbat meal, there were bangs on the door, and one of the members of the household went to answer it. At the doorway was the Gabbai (synagogue attendant) of one of the shuls (synagogues) in the city of Kiryat Gat. He had found out that I was in town, visiting my daughter on Shabbat, and decided to invite me to make a speech in front of all the people of the big shul in Kiryat Gat after the Seudah (meal). I wasn’t really prepared to make a speech. I had no idea what I was going to say, but I couldn’t refuse the Gabbai’s request. I said, B'ezrat Hashem, Hashem will help me, and I’ll find what to say. I made Birkat Hamazon and went to the synagogue. The synagogue was full of people, and I started talking. It wasn’t really a special derashah (sermon): a story here, a story there, about the parasha, and mashalim (parables).
“In the middle of the derashah, I turned to the kahal (congregation) and asked them, ‘Tell me, gentlemen, do you know why people have recently started making celebrations of bat mitzvahs (daughter of the commandment) for girls, which really never happened in the olden days? In the past, when boys reached the age of 13, they would do a bat mitzvah. And now, not only are boys making bar mitzvahs (son of the commandment), but the girls also have a minhag (custom) to do bat mitzvahs. Why? How come?’ Nobody in the congregation of the shul could answer the question. Then I told them, ‘I will tell you why lately there are bat mitzvahs as well as bar mitzvahs. When every Jewish boy reached the age of 13, he started doing mitzvot (commandments), putting on tefillin (phylacteries), and learning Torah. A girl doesn’t wear tefillin. A girl doesn’t learn Torah. That was only for boys, so they made bar mitzvahs for boys, but for the girls they didn’t make any special occasion when she turned 12.’”
“But,” Rav Shalom Schwadron said to the kahal, “nowadays, unfortunately, the girls see that the boys who reach the age of 13 don’t wear tefillin and don’t learn Torah, and yet they do bar mitzvah. So the girls say, ‘If that’s so, we also want to make a bat mitzvah. We’re no different from the boys.’”
A few years later, a Jewish man came over to me and started talking to me. He told me, “Rebbe (rabbi), Rebbe Shalom, you don’t recognize me. I’m from Kiryat Gat. Once upon a time, I was in the shul, and you made a derashah and a joke: How come girls started making bat mitzvahs like the boys? Rebbe, you should know that that sad joke was a tremendous inspiration to me and had a tremendous influence on me. I said to myself, ‘It’s not proper for boys who reach the age of 13 not to be different from the girls.’ The girls don’t wear tefillin, and the boys don’t wear tefillin. The next Shabbat, I asked my boys to start wearing tefillin, and then they started learning in religious schools. It influenced my whole household until we all decided to make teshuvah (repentance), and Baruch Hashem, all of us today keep the Torah and do mitzvot, and we’re very strict about every single detail of the mitzvot.”
Rav Shalom finished his story and told them, “You see, we know how to take a neshamah out, but to put a neshamah in, we don’t know. Who would believe that that joke I made in the derashah on Shabbat, which I hadn’t even prepared, could make an entire family make teshuvah?”