Precious Tears of Desire | Yaakov Shwekey & Simcha Weinman

There was a story I heard, an amazing story, of a photographer in Lakewood, new Jersey. His name is Simcha Weinman. Simcha wanted to take a picture of Rav Elyashiv learning and capture the light and the happiness on his face when he's learning Torah. About 30 years ago, I was learning in Yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel, and at that time, I always loved, I had a passion for photography. I was very close with Rav Elyashiv’s grandson and Rav Elyashiv’s grandson told me his grandfather gets up 4:00 in the morning and I could be able to get a picture or video of his grandfather learning, and no one's around, there's no one there. 3:30 in the morning, he gets up, goes to the window of the apartment of where Rav Elyashiv was, and, yes, 4:00 in the morning, Rav Elyashiv comes in, and he opens up the Gemara, and he starts to learn and he starts to sing. And Simcha, behind the lens, behind the window, starts to get emotional. It was so sweet, and he was singing the words of the Gemara, I started crying. I remember, just like today, Rav Elyashiv, from the window, went like this. And the grandson left the door open and I went inside and Rav Elyashiv asked me, וואָס איז געשען? What happened? He says: The truth is, I wanted to get a good picture of you, and I wanted to show Klal Yisroel when a person loves Torah, what his face can shine. But I got very emotional and I started to cry. He goes: Why are you crying? I told Rav Elyashiv that it is so hard for me to learn, but when I heard the Rav learning, it was so sweet. I wish I could get up 4:00 in the morning and learn like you, and be so connected to Torah. I wish I could do that. So Rav Elyashiv said to me in Yiddish, Your tears and your emotion is worth a lot more than my learning. The fact that you want to be great, your tears, that you want to be like that, is worth more than my learning. I was so touched by it. Years later, I said to myself, You know, it is hard for me to learn, but I'm going to get a Chavrusa and I learn every single day. I would not skip a day. I was amazed by this story. Sometimes we feel we’ll never be Rav Elyashiv. But you know what? You could want, you could desire, and you could want to be better in so many different areas. The struggles that we have in our generation, but we want to be better, we want to strive to elevate. Just like Rav Elyashiv said, Your tears and your desire is worth a lot more than my Torah. Of course, his Torah is worth everything. There’s no question you have to learn. But there has to be the heart in it, you have to desire it. And I feel that we all want. This Vayimaen group is amazing. The fact that we want to see videos every day. I learned a lot from Vayimaen myself. What do we want? We want to awaken ourselves, we want to be מתעורר, we want to be inspired, how to elevate higher and higher and to be worthy of the generation of Moshiach, which is our generation. B’ezrat Hashem, we should continue to work and have an elevation and a desire to be greater and greater, and welcome משיח צדקנו, אמן ואמן.