Lighting Up the Night - Part 4: Planting the Seeds - Rabbi Paysach Krohn

[Music] I want to share with you a beautiful story that will show us what happens when you improve when you do something a little bit more I remember many years ago the first time that I came to the city of Manchester in England now that's a wonderful wonderful city everybody knows about London but if you go to Manchester you cannot believe how many Kol ELLs there are how many schools there are how many synagogues they are it is such a growing community I love going there so many years ago when I was there the first time I was about to give a speech I think there were five hundred women in this auditorium and just as I'm about to leave the house where I was gonna go to to speak somebody comes over to me says wait a second you can't go yet you gotta go visit somebody I said what are you talking about I'm gonna mean these five hundred people waiting I can't visit anybody now no no this woman has MS she's a great lady she's a Rebbetzin she's a genius she gives you a name and she just wants to see you for two minutes she's in a wheelchair she's almost paralysed please she's begging that you should just come to see her just for two minutes on your way Suhani say no to a lady in a wheelchair how do you say to a note to a lady that's almost paralysed my heart was breaking even before I got in there so I said of course okay let's go right now and we'll go under way I come into her dining room there's 25 women sitting around there waiting that she should give them a lecture as she order because she was brilliant and but she wasn't in yet and then they open up the curtain from the living room and they will are in and I thought my heart would fall a young woman I doubt if she was 40 at the time radiated and just it was so young and how could she be in a wheelchair never and a body is paralyzed she could still move our hands in her head and I just I just my heart was breaking for her and she said rabbi Cohen I need you to do me a favor I said what is it and I'm thinking I'm I know what she says how am I gonna say no in front of 25 people right so she says you know rabbi Chrome yeah is a great Siddiq that lives in Manchester his name is rub you who does em say go to Manchester Russia Sheva he comes and he gives me encouragement and I'm still able to write and type what he says he says she said there's a great rabbi rabbi brave de who every time he comes from Israel and it comes to Manchester he comes in and he gives me a zoo and I write down everything that he says and I have read so many books Hebrew books and secular books about remaining strong in difficult times because I've got to remain strong in this difficult time of my illness and I'm finishing the book and please write me a letter for the book and I'm thinking I said why don't you get Rob Sehgal and remember they had said he came not me I'm not the one to write a letter she said no Robert crawl I want you to write the letter because I listened to your CDs I read your books please write me the letter so again how am I gonna say no right so I said I'll tell you what Rebbetzin I didn't read the book so obviously I can't write the letter until I read the book so when I go back to New York and you send me the book I'll read it then if I like it I promise you I'll write the letter so I figured you know over the telephone 5,000 miles away you know I could say no but she was one step ahead of me she said here's the book I typed it out she had already typed it out there was you know she had the manuscript and she was one step ahead okay I took the book I started reading it on the way back to New York from the flight from London I couldn't stop crying such pain such an agony in her daily daily life as she's getting worse and worse I think the saddest page on that book is the day of her eighth grade daughter's graduation the daughter everybody knows when your daughter graduates eighth grade it's such a happy day the daughters are dressed so beautifully the mothers are dressed so nicely and everybody's so proud of each other and she said I had to walk into the auditorium walk in I was wheeled in and my daughter so embarrassed that she has a mother that's so sick and I'm embarrassed for her and she's embarrassed to me it's just awful coming into that graduation that way was just heartbreaking but then she wrote one sentence in that book that literally is so illuminating is so incredible it's not her thought she writes that she read it someplace but she wrote this thought and I took out my highlighter wherever I go out of the if I'm Shabbos take oh I still yeah if the Shabbos I always put I have got a highlighter wherever I am because I'm always underlining I'm a big believer in underlining your seed URI ago malaria Hamas your newspapers just underlined because when you're underlined something next time you read it makes an impression so she has this expression any fool can count the seeds in one Apple you have to be a big home you open up an apple you count four or five seeds but only the highest power I Shem knows how many apples there arm one seed think about that it's brilliant any fool can count the seeds in one Apple but only the highest power Hashem can count how many apples there are in one seat imagine you plan to see the friendship somebody gives you some money when you need to open up a store or to start a job so they're planting a seed of friendship and then your whole life blossoms you have a successful business and then you have shown by it your wife is proud and the husband is proud everybody's proud the children are proud the father's bringing money into the house what sometimes somebody needs a chador and you make a call you go out of your way to make a call or two for that person you're planting a seed and then they get married and they build the whole family that's all the apples you planted that seed that's what we got to do tonight we got a plan seeds seeds of friendship seeds of basil seeds of encouragement because there's so many people even in this base matter tonight then it's so broken and so down because of things that life is dealing out to them and eventually things could change anything can change but sometimes you need that person to give you the physic or sometimes you could be that person to put your arm around somebody and give them the his hook and tell them look I know what you're going through I went through it and if I could make it you could make it that's the point that's what we zookas all about and that's the moisture for Hollis that we have to undertake we cannot let our brothers and sisters in life just go on without our involvement now sometimes a person will say listen I'm ok you don't have to you know worry about me fine but how many single mothers are out there how many widows are out there how many guys need a place for Shabbos guys you may have gotten divorced they're also human beings they also need a place and what about the children from these homes where the parents can teach them Torah maybe become a tutor for a child in Torah or in math or in science whatever you know that you could help somebody else and you put your arm around that person I'll make a call for somebody that's out of a job make a call for somebody that needs a chador these are all seeds that we can plant and we have to get more involved with our brothers and sisters we can't only be selfish and thinking only about ourselves that's the moister for hey look of Hanukkah too and a little bit more and I'll tell you an amazing story there's a school in the five towns it's called may ma Guaymas if tartarus Yaakov and the principal there rabbi Monica Yaffe told me this amazing story he said in the early 1950s there was in Hamilton Ontario Hamilton is 20 miles south of Ontario and over there there was a rabbi of an Orthodox synagogue but it was a small dinky little place and the young couples were going to the conservative and the Reformed Scholes because they had big beautiful buildings and the rabbi rabbi mordechai Greene he knew that he better get some money to build a beautiful building if he doesn't build a beautiful Orthodox sure the young couples they're not gonna come there so he goes to the Royal by of Canada and he asked to speak to the bank manager it's a Gentile fellow his name is mr. Amy a tall good-looking Episcopalian guy and he sits him down in his office he says how can I help you and the rabbi says I'm looking to build a synagogue I need $150,000 can the bank lend me the money so I could build the synagogue now this is the early 1950s 150,000 it's a fortune like a million dollars today and the rabbi says to him what do you want to do now he didn't want to say Orthodox because he knew that the Orthodox people in Hamilton had no money so if he's gonna say all the knocks mr. Amy's gonna know there's no Orthodox people that have a lot of money how you ever gonna pay me back so he said I want to build a Jewish house of worship but then mr. Amy says to him yeah but what denomination so now he was stuck so he said mr. Amy I am an Orthodox rabbi and I want to build an Orthodox synagogue and mr. Amy just stops and he looks at him and tears are coming down his face and then he says to rabbi Greene he says I will give you the money and you'll be able to build a synagogue but I want to tell you why he says at the end of the 1920s he says my father was killed in a fire and our family was devastated my mother myself my brother my sister we had nothing the most such thing as life insurance in those days and we had nothing and two days after the fire there was a man who owned the general store you know in these small towns they have a store that sells everything hardware food clothes everything and they may not own that store with a man by the name of sambuca vet ski he was an Orthodox Jew and two days after a fire comes into my house and he says to my mother mrs. Amy as long as I own this store your children will have clothes you come in and you take whatever you need I will never ask you for money well you want to pay me sometimes you can and he says mrs. Amy as long as I own the store your children will have food every morning you come in here you take the bread the milk the butter the eggs whatever you need you could keep a count I will never ask you for money as long as I own this store your children will have food and mr. Amy who's now wiping away his tears says to Rabbi green the only reason we survived was because of that Orthodox Jew and he said when I saw you through the big Bank open window you looked like an Orthodox Jew and it occurred to me you know it's about time that I paid back sambuca vets key and when you told me you're an Orthodox Jew who wants to build an Orthodox synagogue I knew that God sent you time I want to tell you my dear friend when he doublet puts this on you got to go to Hamilton and that sure was there the gorgeous jewel take a picture of it because rabbi Daniel green the son of this rabbi mordechai is the robbed there now I remember Mordechai Brokaw she was still alive maybe get a picture of him play it that brought that's how you do it but how did that happen that's the seeds Asher was built because of the seeds that sambuca Bansky did for a family that wasn't Jewish but they were human beings and they were down and they were out and he planted seeds of friendship and love and concern and a big beautiful show was built not only that I want to tell you miss if that Terrace Yaakov interview rabbi mordechai Yaffe who told me his story he said I grew up in that jewel he said when I until I was 17 my father didn't let me go through yeshiva you know why cuz he was a Holocaust survivor he was afraid to send me out of town when I was 17 I first went to Negus rile in Toronto and he says I always say to the boys in the school the 200 kids he said look at me I started learning to around when I was 17 and I became a principal of a school imagine what you guys could do and you started in the first grade so look at that sambuca vet ski who's surely in the oil MMS right he planted seeds at the end of the 1920s not only was a shul built but a Russia Shiva was built whose today's teaching Tehran to hundreds of kids that's the my Sibella