Rav Dovid Moshe Steinwurzel was an important rabbi dayan and teacher at Bobov in Brooklyn. He was always thinking about Torah. One day he arrived to teach at Bobov and his students asked why he was carrying a paper bag? He was surprised because he normally did not go around carrying a bag. He looked in it and was shocked- it was full of garbage and he had carried it from his home in Midwood to his class in Boro Park on the bus. He then remembered that just as he was leaving his house his wife and asked him to take out the garbage. He had forgotten about it until he arrived to teach and was asked by his students.
What's the shaychus here with Torah?
ReplyDelete>He was always thinking about Torah
ReplyDeleteWhich is nice if you live a hermit's life with no responsibilities to others, I guess.
There's a story about the Rogatchover who was climbing a ladder to get to a sefer from his library, and started reading it while still up the ladder. He was so engrossed in learning that he forgot to come down, until several hours later somebody walked into the room.
ReplyDeleteThe usual: such a holy man, he couldn't focus on anything other than Torah
ReplyDeleteAbsent-mindedness is often confused with devotion to Torah.
ReplyDeleteAs is being OCD
ReplyDeletewell, I do it all the time, eg I have something else on my mind, and end up not remembering why I walked into a certain room.
ReplyDeleteWhy can't you just enjoy the positive without dredging up negative?
ReplyDeleteDo you take out the garbage? It's a nice thing for a husband to do.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carl_Spitzweg_021.jpg
ReplyDeleteI take out the garbage, I do the laundy and most of the cleaning up after Shabbos. You're welcome.
ReplyDeleteThe Rogatchover had longer hair! and was not clean shaven
ReplyDeleteThe Rogatchover also did not walk around bareheaded.
ReplyDeleteThe picture is an oil-on-canvas painting by the German painter and poet Carl Spitzweg, and is known as "The Bookworm" (German: Der Bücherwurm).
It probably depicts a non-Jew.
My point is posting it, is to illustrate that non-Jews also can be "bookish", and can get very engrossed in the material that they're studying, and forget where they're standing.
Elkohen being a recent example
ReplyDelete