⭐ The Envelope Opener👤 By R' YY Jacobson💊 Daily Dose #2,334

I grew up in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. One of my memories as a child was, this is of course before the days of computers, before the days of fax machines, and certainly before the days of the worldwide web and the internet, which officially emerges in 1994. This is 20 years before that or 15 years before that. And I still remember the mailmen coming every day besides Sunday to 770 Eastern Parkway where the Labavature Rebbo was delivering mail. And it was a for a kid it was such a sight cuz everybody you know you get 10 envelopes, 20 envelopes, 30 envelopes. If you're really in debt, 40 envelopes if you're bankrupt, 50 envelopes, right? Fine. But the Reb, he would come with sacks, literally huge sacks which I never saw before or after. Each one had like 200 letters and he came like with three or four of them every single day including Shabas and we deliver them. So it was around I would say between three and 600 letters. That's what it seemed to me as a child from those sacks. And I don't think I'm exaggerating at all. Maybe even more or but certainly a few hundred letters every day. Now I knew from his secretaries that had a custom he did not allow his secretaries or gabayam or shamsham to open the letters because most of them were confidential. He didn't want they should have access. So he opened every letter himself. Now I don't know if you ever tried opening 600 letters a day and that's just one little responsibility of many many other responsibilities. He carried a world on his shoulders and he's opening every letter himself and answering them. So one of his who I happen to know his name is Khan decides to do something that nobody thought of. What did he own? He goes to the store and he buys an envelope opener. Today not many people use envelopes so much but in those days it was very useful. You put the envelope into the opener opens a machine. You're not opening it. You don't get scratched. Your finger is not working 600 times to open a letter and it gets stuck and it gets scratched and you're bleeding. An envelope opener. Zman says that the Reb got it. He thanked him and he returned it. He said it makes too much noise. Made a lot of it makes too much noise. So he went and he searched for a silent model. He calls up the company. No, they don't have anything. Any anything, you know, with the right amount of money they found was an old model that went out of went out of stock and he found it and he was so happy and he delivers this lab. So have a silent envelope open. Lo and behold, the Reb returns it. My high. I guess the Reb felt that he had to he owed an explanation. So he told his secretary, his name was Rabbi Klein to tell him and he said as follows. He said, "When people send a letter to me, they seal their envelope. Different people seal their envelopes in different ways. Some people seal their envelopes with their saliva, with their spit. Some people seal their envelopes with glue, with a stapler, with scotch [Music] tape. There are those who seal their envelopes with their tears. How can I open with a machine that which a Jew sealed with his tears? If I put the envelope into the machine, the machine won't pick up the tears. The machine will just tear the envelope. I open it with my fingers. I can absorb the tears. And if there was a message here, I don't start reading the letter when I start reading the letter. I start reading the letter when I open the envelope. Did Drew seal this envelope with his heart, with his nishama, with his anguish? You don't give that to a machine. that ability to be able to hold space for someone's tears. We don't always have solutions for people's tears. I probably we don't have solutions for many of the tears of people, but I can hold space for it. I can open the envelope with my fingers. I can absorb it. I can look at it. I don't have to run away from it. [Applause] [Music]