Cut from Finer Cloth | Rabbi Shlomo Landau

R’ Moshe is a very successful businessman and often his business takes him to many different places. He travels by plane, airports, meetings, city centers, hotels, but to his credit, he's extremely meticulous when it comes to Shmiras HaEinayim. I think he's on a higher level than most of us, because when he walks the streets, when he walks the train stations and the airports, he doesn't look ahead, he always looks down, with just enough so that he could see peripherally what's happening around him. But ultimately, he does not look around him. He shared the most incredible thing that happened to him. He was once on business, in a random city, and he's walking down a street and he's not looking around, probably walking for about 5 minutes, when all of a sudden, someone taps him on the shoulder and he jumps. He wasn't expecting it. He figured maybe someone wants directions. But it was a large, tall Goy. And the fellow says to him, Excuse me, sir. He goes: What? He goes: Are you okay? He goes: Is something wrong? Do I look not okay? He goes: No, it's just really strange. You're looking down. Do you have an issue? Do you have a problem? And he hems and he haws, and he says: Listen, I'm an Orthodox Jew, an observant Jew, and I try not to look at things that I don't have to look at, or maybe things that are not appropriate. So wherever I am and whenever I walk, I always look down instead of looking ahead of me. And the guy says to him, Are you for real? Is it just you? He goes: No. It's actually in the Bible, that a person is supposed to be careful not to stray after their hearts and their eyes, and therefore, I've conditioned and I've trained myself, it's a struggle, but I don't look around. And the guy says: Is it all of you? He goes: It's Jews who are observant. He goes: That's incredible. I'm not Jewish, but my mom is. He says: Sir, well, I got some news for you. If your mom is Jewish, then you're Jewish. He goes: Are you serious? He says: Yes. So he says, So I’m really part of these people who live on a higher plane? He goes: You are, and you should probably find out a little bit more about your heritage. He thought that was the end of the story. He comes back home. He shares it with one of his friends. That friend, a while later, happened to have been in a Chasidishe Beis Medrash for Hakafos on Simchas Torah. And he noticed that while everyone was dressed in the לבוש, they were dressed in black, there was one guy who was front and center, and he was dancing like you can't imagine, אשרינו, מה טוב חלקנו but he didn't look the part. After Hakafos, his curiosity got the better of him and he goes over to him and he says to him: Who you are? So he says: I’m a Ba’al Teshuva, and I became really close to this Rebbe over here, and that's why I'm here and that's why I'm dancing, and I'm so excited to be a Yid. And he says: You want to hear my story? And he tells him the story, and he says, I was once walking in a city center and I saw a Chasidic Jew, and the guy was looking down, and I realized that people are able to live on a higher plane. And that was so attractive that that's where I started my journey. You know, I think sometimes, when it comes to Vayimaen, we focus on the challenges and the struggles of Nisyonos, and they are. But maybe we need to take a moment and step back and realize the gehoybine, lofty level that we live on. The rest of the world just looks at everything and anything, but we... we’re cut from finer cloth. That's who we are as Jewish people. When you're inside, you don't always see it, but from the outside, you see the incredibly lofty level that all of us live.