Appreciating Our Hard Work | Rabbi Yisroel Besser

There was a young man in Bnei Brak who wandered away a little bit from his family's way, sadly, רחמנא לצלן, and he left home completely and stopped keeping Shabbos, stopped eating kosher, and eventually he got engaged to a girl who wasn't even Jewish. Didn't tell his parents, no engagement party, of course, but somebody close to him said, You're getting married in a month. Now go to your parents and tell them. At least part from them with decency, with dignity. They're your parents. They brought you to the world. So he said: Okay. Called his parents and said: Can I come for Shabbos? And they said: Sure. But no conversations, no... I’m not changing my mind. But he came. Didn't really spend much time at the meal. Of course, he didn't go to Shul. He spent most of Shabbos smoking on the porch. Before Mincha on Shabbos afternoon, his father says, I'm going to a Shiur from the Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Shteinman, R’ Aharon Leib Steinman. Would you like to join me? He said: Sure, I'll come. Surprisingly, and he came. And he came to the Shiur in the Rosh Yeshiva's house. Not a big crowd. And after the Shiur, everybody passed by to say Good Shabbos, including him. As he extends his hand to R’ Aharon Leib, he says, The Rosh Yeshiva should know that I don't keep Shabbos. So R’ Aharon Leib says, How long is it since you've kept Shabbos? He said: Two years. R’ Aharon Leib said: In those two years, were there ever moments where you had reflection or introspection, a הרהור תשובה, a thought that maybe you should be doing it a better way? He said: Yeah. R’ Aharon Leib said: Like, how many times? He said: Four times that I could remember I had those thoughts. He said: And about how long do these thoughts last? He said: About ten minutes each time. So R’ Aharon Leib took his hand and said, Forty minutes. Forty minutes of a Yid who was in a place that צדיקים גמורים can’t reach, the place of a Ba’al Teshuva. You had a real הרהור תשובה, a genuine, sincere הרהור תשובה. Forty minutes of that, it's an honor to say Good Shabbos to you. Of course, R’ Aharon Leib’s words landed like a hammer blow in this person's heart and he went home. For forty minutes you were a Ba’al Teshuva in such a place. That was the beginning. That opened the door back home to him. The engagement fell away, that lifestyle fell away, and eventually he came back. Later, his father asked him, How come you came to Rav Shteinman’s Shiur with me? That was so unexpected. He says: I’ll tell you the truth. When I was a boy, a little boy in Cheider, my whole class went to R’ Aharon Leib Shteinman for a test, for a Bechinah. And I was very weak, I was a weak student, and he asked fairly easy questions to everybody, and he asked me an easy question, to which I didn't know the answer. So he asked me an easier question, and I still didn't know the answer. So he asked me a third question that was extremely simple, and I still... I didn't know, I didn't care to know, I didn’t answer him. When the test was over, R’ Aharon Leib gave every boy a candy, but he didn't give me a candy. He asked me to please stay behind. When everybody was filed out of the room and the door closed, it was just me and him, R’ Aharon Leib said, Mein kind, my child, in Yiddishkeit, the reward is not given for the accomplishment. That's not what you do. In Yiddishkeit, we recognize how hard you try. They only answered one question. They tried once, you tried three times. You had three questions you had to strain for and stress for and think about and push yourself, so I'm giving you three candies. When you mentioned that you were going to Rav Shteinman’s Shiur, I said: Somebody who appreciates the hard work, not the accomplishment, that's a Shiur I want to go to. We have to learn to give ourselves candies, not for the accomplishments, but for the work, for the exertion, for the effort, for the toil, because in Shomayim that's what they give candies for, that's what they celebrate. Our hard work.