Vayimaen Muscles | Mr. Harry Rothenberg

A few winters ago, I got a call from a friend. He wanted to know if he had a case. He had fallen while leaving someone's home, slipped on snow or ice, and shattered his wrist. I asked him: When had it last snowed? He said: A few days before. I said: A few days? That's more than enough time for the homeowner to have cleared the ice, shoveled it, put salt down. That could be a case. Did you fall on the homeowner’s property, on their walkway or stairs, or on the public sidewalk? He said: Well, there are stairs in front, but why does that matter? I don't like to answer that question for reasons that will become obvious, but he had asked it, so I answered. I told him that if you fell on the stairs, he said there were stairs, in that case, you will have a viable case. That will be a successful lawsuit. If you fell on the sidewalk, it won't be, because in the state where you fell, the sidewalk, the public sidewalk, belongs to the municipality. There's immunity. It's a higher level of proof. We won't be able to hit that. That will not be a case. So I said: What did you fall on? He said: Well, before I answer that, how much money are we talking about? I said: I don't know. I haven't seen your medical records. He said: Look at your phone. So I look at my phone. He had sent me a copy of his X-ray. The X-ray was of his post-surgical wrist. Obviously, it had been a displaced fracture. It required hardware. There was a plate and a bunch of screws going through his wrist. I said: Look, I still don't know, because I don't know what kind of recovery you're going to have. This just happened. You might need multiple future surgeries if there's a nonunion. But let's assume, God willing, that you have a good recovery and you only need one more surgery to remove the hardware. You're still talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars net, after my fee. So which was it, sidewalk or stairs? He said: Well, let me think. There are no cameras. Now, do I even need to tell you what he said? Hundreds of thousands of dollars tax free if he says the stairs, zero, hole in a bagel, if he says the sidewalk and there are no cameras. And he said: I fell on... the sidewalk. מי כעמך ישראל. Who is like the Jewish people? Who would answer like that? Who wouldn't tell a tiny little lie? It's only insurance, anyway. A Vayimaen Yid, that's who wouldn't tell the lie. Someone who realizes that we've got to control ourselves. Very tempting to tell that little lie, make a few more dollars. But you remind yourself, Hashem doesn't need me to lie in order to put a few extra dollars in my pocket. That number that He put next to my name on Rosh Hashanah, I'm going to get that. He's not telling me: Come on, you got to work with me. Lie a little, cheat a little, steal a little. And he understood that, this fellow, because he was a Vayimaen Yid. But I said to him, Why did you ask me how much before you answered, if you knew you were going to tell me that you fell on the sidewalk? And he said with a big smile, Because I wanted to know how big a Tzaddik I am. And I told him, You're a very, very big Tzaddik. And I hope that his story will inspire others to use their Vayimaen muscles in the same fashion, when it comes to financial issues.