The Condition
(Photograph courtesy of Slavuta.info)Excerpt from "The Reward of the Righteous Women":
The story is told of a chassid who would occasionally leave his family to travel to the Bnei Yissachar zt"l. His wife would protest at the great difficulty of being left alone to care for their many young children. Once, upon discussing an upcoming trip, she agreed to let him go on condition that he promise her half of his reward for the mitzvah of visiting the Rebbe, and that he inform the Rebbe of their agreement.
When the chassid told the Rebbe of the condition he had made with his wife, the Rebbe scolded him. "Fool! You should have asked her for half of her reward, which is far greater than your own. She is the one left behind to care for the children, a most difficult and thankless task. You on the other hand, have a thoroughly enjoyable time here, experiencing the spiritual delights of being with your Rebbe and the other chassidim. You see therefore, that her reward is greater than yours."
6 Comments:
Perhaps those married men with children who go to Uman for Rosh Hashana should consider this. By all means go, but understand what you're doing!
I, too, owe my wife a tremendous amount of Hakaras HaTov for accompanying me to Bnei Brak on several occasions, to allow me to spend time with the Modzitzer Rebbe Shlita [including this Shabbos, which is the first Tish of the new Rebbe Shlita]!
Yitz: Why limit it to Breslovers going to Uman? It applies to all Jews. I relate to it for all the times I have gone to shul and my wife has had to hold down the fort.
On a side note, Yitz, we all look forward to reading upcoming postings from you on your experiences with the new Modzitzer Rebbe.
I wasn't, by any means, limiting my comment to Breslovers and Uman, as I immediately followed it up with my own example!
You will be hearing about the new Rebbe Shlita; I already know him quite well. Our biggest problem [hopefully] is getting used to calling him the Rebbe Shlita, as opposed to "the Rosh Yeshiva" which is how we referred to him up till now. He was the head of the Modzitz Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, which is now, hopefully temporarily, closed. But that's another story...
Why in those old Chassidic inspired stories is someone always insulted for fool?
Someone who doesn't know something or does not think something over is not automatically a fool.
That said, great story.
Pragmatician - perhaps you're taking the language in the wrong way. Your interpretation is that he is calling him a complete idiot. Perhaps, tho, it can be understood that he was scolding him for doing something FOOLish!
A nice story to comfort those who leave their wives befind to take care of the multitude of kids while they sit with thier noses in a book. Hah...her reward is greater!
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