"Are you serious? Me—go see Rebbetzin Kanievsky?!" An unexpected twist you won’t forget

A woman far from Jewish observance who lived near Be’er Sheva once confided her troubles to a co-worker. "Listen to my advice," her friend told her with a surprising, unconventional suggestion. "In Bnei Brak there’s an elderly rebbetzin, Rebbetzin Kanievsky. Go see her and she’ll bless you," relates Rabbi A. Hefetz, in his column in the "Shabbat Kodesh" supplement, a remarkable story that took place more than 20 years ago, which he heard from Rabbi Chizkiyahu Yosef Karlenshtein, son of the great preacher Rabbi Reuven, of blessed memory.

"Have you gone mad? Lost your mind? Me—to Rebbetzin Kanievsky? Who is this woman?!"

"I’ll explain it to you, and if you’re still not interested, that’s fine. But know this: what worked for me will work for you. If I—as you know me—went a few months ago to Bnei Brak to see her, you can too. If I was blessed and helped, you can be, too."

"We’re at opposite ends of the world. The religious are against us—how am I supposed to go see a rebbetzin?!" The co-worker was stunned by the suggestion.

"Even so, you can go to Bnei Brak," her friend replied. "I also went for an hour for a blessing. If you want, I’ll go with you to the Rebbetzin in Bnei Brak, and of course we’ll dress modestly. She’s a rebbetzin who won’t tolerate even a hint of immodesty. We’ll come in normal, modest clothes." The friend kept persuading her that it’s really not a big deal to receive a blessing from a righteous rebbetzin, and the next day they set out.

They reached the entrance to the city of Bnei Brak, got off the bus on Jabotinsky Street by "Mor Institute," turned onto Rabbi Akiva Street, and asked how to get to Rashbam Street. The answer: Route 54, right here at the nearby bus stop. They waited at the stop, and soon the two boarded the bus and sat in the back row. In front of them sat a 14-year-old boy looking into a book. They asked him, "Where do you get off for Rashbam Street, for Rebbetzin Kanievsky?" The boy apparently didn’t hear or didn’t understand, and answered them, "I think you should get off here, at the very next stop."

They got off and asked passersby, "Where is Rashbam Street?"

"You got off ten stops too early," a local resident replied in surprise. "Who told you to get off here?!"

They immediately understood what had happened. The one seeking a blessing cried out to her friend: "I told you I’m not interested in coming to Bnei Brak. We already discovered at the entrance how a Haredi boy mocked us. He saw two secular women and decided to mock them and got us off here. I’m going back. This little outing was more than enough for me. That’s malice from a religious teen."

"Don’t make a scene," her friend pleaded. "We’re already in Bnei Brak—let’s continue. Don’t take it to heart. We’ll get on another bus."

Ten minutes later, Bus 54 arrived. They boarded, while one of them kept denouncing the religious and "that kid" who had managed to make fools of them in their very first moments in Bnei Brak.

This time they got off at the correct stop, on Nehemiah Street. The one with prior experience, who had once been to the Rebbetzin’s home, remembered the way, and together they walked from Nehemiah Street to Rashbam Street.

They reached the building—and almost screamed in unison

When they reached the stairwell on Rashbam Street, they nearly let out a scream. Who was standing there by the stairs? None other than that same 14-year-old kid. They were seeing black, in every sense, and their anger flared. They approached the stairs, edged him off to the side—almost as if pushing him—and said loudly, "Excuse us, can we go up to the Rebbetzin?!"

"Yes, you can go up, but wait—by any chance were you the ones who asked me on the bus about half an hour ago where Rashbam Street is?"

"Yes," they answered with thinly veiled anger.

"I was supposed to travel somewhere else, on the other side of the city, but I got off here on purpose and walked over to wait for you and apologize. I must have been absorbed in something and didn’t understand what you asked me, and I told you to get off right away. After you got off, I realized my mistake, so I extended my trip specifically to wait and apologize, and also to pay you back for the extra bus fare I caused you."

The boy took out the exact fare for two bus rides, in small coins, handed it to them, lifted his feet, and disappeared from the area as if carried off by the wind.

They were speechless. They were stunned. There wasn’t extra time to think. They went upstairs to the Rebbetzin’s home, made their request and asked for a blessing; the Rebbetzin said what she said and blessed as she blessed. Before they left, one of them couldn’t ignore the incident with the boy: "Rebbetzin, we have a strange story here. Some little boy made us get off the bus, etc., and then we saw him down here and he said he waited on purpose to pay us the amount we paid for the second bus," she told the Rebbetzin. "What exactly happened here?!"

The Rebbetzin answered them: "Look, this isn’t a strange story. For a child raised in a Jewish home, this isn’t anything special; this behavior is natural, because that’s how he was educated from a young age. I don’t know whether he was truly obligated to reimburse you for the cost of the second ride—perhaps that’s beyond the letter of the law, and so on—but the story itself isn’t imaginary or odd; it’s something completely typical and natural for a Haredi, God-fearing boy from Bnei Brak."

They listened, said goodbye, and went down the stairs. At the bottom, at the foot of the Rebbetzin’s building, the younger woman—who had come here for the first time—stood and said to her friend: "Listen carefully to what I’m saying. If that’s what the Haredim are like—if this is really how a young Haredi boy behaves without someone standing over him, without hair-splitting and without shouting—he simply came all the way here on his own, waited, gave, and apologized. If this is the greenhouse where such flowers grow, I want to grow in this greenhouse too. That’s it."

Twenty years passed, and a veteran lecturer told the story in a talk he gave at a seminar in Jerusalem. When the talk ended, one of the girls approached him, asked to speak, and said: "That’s my mother. I’m the daughter." Today she has 4 sons and 4 daughters, among the finest and sweetest, in Jerusalem’s Haredi educational institutions.

Rabbi Hefetz ends the story and turns to each and every one of us: Even if you don’t go out to do outreach, and even if you’re a yeshiva student or a seminary girl who isn’t tasked with bringing others closer—if you’re simply behaving the way your home, yeshiva, and seminary taught you—you have the power and the strength of light to bring more Kiddush Hashem into the world. A 14-year-old boy can be credited with a mother and her eight children, and all her grandchildren and descendants throughout the generations—because a flame can rise on its own when it burns within you, and you yourself are a candle of Torah and the observance of its commandments.

In what ways can someone mistakenly cause a desecration of Hashem’s Name, and how does one atone for it? Rabbi Eliyahu Amar on the importance of how we speak and behave in everyday life: