Nazis, Clowns & The Chassid - The Picture That Changed My Life

i'd like to share a story that happened with me in the beginning of my yeshiva days so as a younger student for me younger means about mid-20s that's when i started my yeshiva life i didn't go to heder or the different levels of jewish education i grew up mainly going to public schools and so when i'm about 25 i decided to start searching searching for truth searching for more purpose and meaning and that led me after about a five-year spiritual journey which in my opinion related very much to the idea of in fact my bar mitzvah parsha i found out many years later was partial and in a sense i feel like i took that personal journey of avraham which i guess every jew in this world essentially takes that journey of trying to find himself and his real purpose connecting to his neshama so here i was in yeshiva for the first time in my life looking around looking at how people dressed and how they spoke feeling out of place the language the look the yamakas the white shirts the black jackets the paius actually stuck out a lot in my head and it's interesting because in the beginning of course i didn't have pace i had one of those fashionable haircuts where you spike up the front i can remember spending about 20 minutes trying to perfectly mess up the front of my hair it's a bit ironic i came across this magazine a jewish magazine and started flipping through the pages it was in the time of the holocaust there were many german soldiers they all seemed to be very strong very big blonde hair blue eyes perfectly styled and they were all standing around this hussed a skinny short small man in a black coat with a black beard and curly black pace and i remember looking at that scene it had a tremendous impact on me i thought to myself it's interesting you know if you would have been in that scene one of the german people or even one of the spectators you know it looked like the man in the middle was some kind of clown and everybody was laughing at him from around but i said to myself and it's interesting that this thought what came to me was imagine from hashem's perspective who were the clowns and who was the man and it is my belief that the man standing there standing against all of what he had to go through was that husted in the middle with the curly pais looking at that husset i can honestly say that that's not what i would expect myself to look like but it was at that moment looking at that picture understanding who that man was and what he represented where i made a decision to go out my pace and i grew up to pay us and at some point i decided what length was right for me and if you look actually you know you don't notice the page but i keep paying forever i never really take them all off i decided to keep payes because of that magazine and that that experience that i have then and it's an interesting thing because you know we talk about payers so there is no obligation to have very long current pays but in a sense beyond what's our obligation those pays are a jewish symbol a symbol of who we are we're different we have a different look and we have to understand and appreciate the beauty in that look you know it's beautiful to be jewish that's what i learned that day in yeshiva and that's what i continue to try to instill in my children that being what hashem created you to be allowing you in the shama to shine through that is the ultimate beauty beauty comes from within it's not about what we show on the outside but what is truly in our heart and we give hashem our heart that's what matters sometimes when you give the heart it comes in a package when you give a present you have to put it in a box and so the box that our heart and our soul comes in is this jewish box