Divrei Bechukosai
Sleeping Giants
The Gemara in Makkos (24a) brings a posuk: “And you will be lost among the nations.” (Vayikra 26:38) Rav there comments, “This posuk terrifies me.” Rav Avigdor Miller zt”l notes a problem. This posuk comes in the middle of the horrible first set of tochachos, a maelstrom of death, disease, and destruction. Those didn’t terrify Rav, but this did? Rather, Rav is telling us a yesod: absolutely the worst thing that can happen to a Jew is to forget that he is Jewish.
We live in a time when this fate has fallen upon most of our people. Still, every Jew – past, present, and future – stood at Har Sinai and shouted “Na’asei v’nishma!” Even the most distant Jew has within him a pintele yid, a sleeping giant. My parnasa, as a wholesale flooring salesman has brought me in contact with many of these lost yidden. Here are a few stories.
First, there was the Little Old Lady. A dealer had asked me to inspect a carpet owned by an elderly widow who lived alone. She had complained to him that the carpet had crushed down prematurely.
I drove to Lutherville, an upscale non-Jewish neighborhood, found the house, knocked on the door, and was let in.
The interior was a shock. I have been in many gentiles’ houses, and so am used to an “image” or two. This woman, however, had flooded her living room with them. Not only were the shelves loaded down with statuettes, but the walls were covered with pictures, and large statues on the floor created a weird obstacle course. In between those resting on the mantelpiece sat two small photographs, one of a young man in a green army uniform, and one of a young mother with children – presumably, the descendants of my hostess.
The problem with the carpet was obvious – she wasn’t vacuuming enough (perhaps, I thought, because of the difficulties in getting around the statue collection). I briefly explained to her the problem and its solution and then turned to the door for a quick exit.
Before I could leave, she softly asked, “Excuse me, are you Jewish?”
“Yes I am.”
“Me, too.”
I stopped right there. She beckoned me to her kitchen table. We sat down, and she told me her story. She had been born into a Jewish family (and could even remember the Yiddish names of her aunts), but a non-Jewish family had adopted her at a young age and had wasted no time in indoctrinating her into their ways.
She then turned to me and asked, “Can you get me a Jewish book?”
The next day, I showed up with Gateway to Happiness, by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin.
Two weeks later, I received a message from her to pick up the book. When I arrived, she came to the door with a smile, handed me the book, and with a brief thankyou, shut the door.
As I drove back, I remembered those pictures on the mantelpiece. “If they only knew. . .”
Then there was the Nouveau Riche Couple. As part of my training, I helped a crew install carpet. The day I joined them, they had been assigned to a job in Owings Mills, a toney Jewish suburb of Baltimore.
Not only did the size of the house (it rivaled that of a larger-than-medium shul) make an impression. Every cubic inch of interior had obviously been mulled over by a designer. Days had been spent arranging and coordinating every room. Everything – the furniture, the window treatments, the décor -- flowed from one carefully-planned, soft pastel tone to another.
Even the occupants matched their surroundings. The husband strutted about in his pajama pants like a tanned Greek statue. His wife, casually but expensively attired, kept herself busy with their one designer child. They ignored us, of course. We were The Great Unwashed to them. We worked with our hands.
Just before we left, I noticed something out of place. In one obscure corner, on an out-of-the-way shelf, garishly glowed a small golden menorah. Obviously, the designers hadn’t placed it there. Evidently, freedom and miracles still had their place in this hotsy-totsy prison.
And then there was The Super Salesman. My company had recently taken on a line of carpet padding, and I was told to take the salesman for that line to my better accounts.
In the flooring trade, carpet salesmen look down upon padding salesman. This one, however, was the bottom of the barrel. It wasn’t just the shark suit, nor the blast of breath spray before every meeting. The fellow exuded such an obnoxiously slick attitude that I wondered why he didn’t leave a trail of slime behind him.
We drove around Baltimore all morning, offending my customers as we went. (One still hasn’t forgiven me for enabling this guy to hard-sell him twenty rolls of expensive pad.) Finally, it was lunchtime. As we passed several treif restaurants on the way to Chapps, I explained to him that I was on a special diet, called “kosher” and –
He let me know right then and there that while he was Jewish, he had married an Italian woman, that they lived for epicurean pleasures, and that he had an utter disdain for all things religious. “We decided not to have children so they wouldn’t interfere with our good times,” he declared.
That was it. It was time for me to put him in his place. As we pulled into the restaurant’s parking lot, I decided to throw upon him the kiruv equivalent of the atomic bomb. Rabbi Motty Berger, perhaps one of the most successful kiruv workers today, had guaranteed me that this move would shake the neshamah of even the most far-gone soul.
I parked the car. Pulling out a dollar bill, I said to him, “I guess you don’t believe in a next world.”
“Not at all.”
“Well I do. In fact, I believe that you have a share in the next world. Here, take this dollar. Sell me your eternity.”
To my great dismay, he blithely took it.
Lunch was misery. Disturbing thoughts plagued me. He was supposed to wake up from his slumber, not fall further into it. What’s more, what sort of olam habah had I bought? Would I also inherit his gehinnom?
We paid, left the restaurant, and walked back to my minivan. As I opened the door, I noticed that The Super Salesman’s quick fingers had been at work once again. Rolled up in the cupholder was my dollar.