They Murdered His Father - A Sefira Story

[music] >> A Torah anytime original series. I met a man recently, this holy looking kid with a long white beard. [music] We struck up a conversation and he says, "Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I didn't always look like this." And he starts telling me his story. He said, [music] "I had a hard life. I grew up in Hollywood, Florida, completely non-religious in a home that was basically the opposite of holy. His father was almost unbelievably abusive person. He would beat him, he would beat his mother, [music] and then he would wake up the next day and he would beat them again. And then one day his father was stabbed and then shot to death. And this kid looks at me in the eye and he says, "That was the happiest day of my life." You hear that and your heart breaks. Then he tells me he got into a horrible accident and he spent months wheelchair-bound [music] and his mother got sick with cancer and she died when he was in [music] his 20s and he went through a divorce and he battled bipolar and he struggled with PTSD. And he told me he tried even to commit suicide when he was stuck in that wheelchair. And then he says, almost laughing at himself, "Even that I failed at. Life was so hard for me I couldn't even figure out a way to commit suicide." This is a man who walked through fire barefoot. But then the story turns. After his father was killed, his mother, who was sick and weak and alone, started going to shul. Now, the only shul in the area was too far to walk and only driving distance. And since she couldn't drive, he drove her every Shabbos. And he tells me, "I was terrified. [music] My whole life I was told if you break Shabbos, they'll stone you to death. So I would pull up and drop off my mother and then speed away like I just robbed the shul." But then one Shabbos he was stuck. [music] His mother's cancer spread all over her body and she was too weak to walk into the shul by herself. So he had no choice. He had [music] to get out of the car and help her to the door. And that is when he saw the rabbi walking towards them [music] and he froze. He said his heart was pounding. He's come to kill me. He's going to drag me to the basement of the shul and make this tribunal and then hang me. That's it. I'm dead. Every step the [music] rabbi took he shook harder. And then the rabbi reaches the door. He throws his arms open smiling ear to ear with a giant beam of warmth and light and he says, "SHALOM ALEICHEM. WELCOME TO OUR SHUL. What's your name?" This man, this broken soul, looks at the rabbi and stammers, "Rabbi, I I drove [music] here. Please don't kill me." And the rabbi pauses and smiles, looks at him dead in the [music] eye and says, "Well, you drove to the right place. Come inside. We have a nice [music] warm seat waiting for you." Do you hear that? This holy kid looks at me and he [music] says, "Those 30 seconds of warmth saved my soul because he didn't see my sins. He didn't see my scars. He didn't see the disaster I thought my life was. He [music] saw my neshama starving for oxygen and his shalom aleichem gave my neshama [music] back to me." Every single person you meet in this world, every single one, is carrying [music] a story you know absolutely nothing about. Every single person in the world you will ever meet carries a pain [music] you never saw and a fire they walked through while everyone else slept and a mountain they climbed with bloody hands and a heartbreak they never told a soul about. And that leads [music] to two ironclad truths. Number one, how unbelievably foolish it is to say even one negative word about any Jew. You don't know what battle they're fighting. You don't know what chapter of their story you're walking into. You don't know if you're meeting them on their lowest day or their bravest day. >> [music] >> And number two, how unbelievably powerful it is to say even one kind word because you don't know the pain you're erasing or the dignity you're restoring or the life you might literally be saving. Hashem put a nuclear reactor in our mouths. Our words can destroy but they can also resurrect. Most of us are amazing at being nice to the people who like us, the people who validate us, the people who think like us and act like us and dress like us and vote like us and daven like us, the people we already agree with. We greet them like long-lost cousins at a chasuna. But that's not the test. The real mitzvah the real vihavta l'rei'acha kamocha is when it's someone who rubs you the wrong way, someone who annoys you, someone who disagrees with you, someone who doesn't validate you at all, someone who doesn't flatter you, doesn't think like you, and maybe doesn't even like you. That's where greatness [music] starts. That's where ahavas Yisrael actually means something because it's easy to love the people who make you feel good. But it's a holy to love the people who don't. It's easy to [music] speak kindly about the guy you naturally admire, but it's divine to speak kindly about the guy you don't understand. It's easy to smile at your friends, but it's powerful to smile at a stranger who looks like he's hanging on by a thread. That's what that rabbi did. He didn't wait until he met a perfect Jew on a perfect day. He didn't wait [music] until his story was all neat and pretty. He saw a broken soul and he chose warmth anyway. And that choice saved a life. So let's use this gift, this unbelievable power of speech, the way that that rabbi did to build, to heal, to revive a soul that forgot how to breathe because you never know. [music] Maybe the next shalom aleichem you say to the guy you don't really want to say it [music] to might be the one that changes a life forever. Because in life, the person you least expect may be the one who needs your kind words the most. >> [music]