By Yoni Schwartz
Martin Friedman, a simple Jew, once came to Israel to visit his children. When there, his son-in-law took him to Rav Ovadiah Yosef, ZT”L, to get a bracha. When they arrived, they saw a line of hundreds of people waiting to speak with him. After waiting some time, their turn arrived.
Rav Ovadiah Yosef took one look at him and asked, “I smell the scent of Gan Eden coming from you. What is your z’chus (merit)?”
Confused, Mr. Friedman’s son-in-law had to explain to him what the word z’chus even meant. “I don’t know, I'm just a simple Yid,” he said. However, the Rav didn’t let up and kept prying.
Rav Ovadia Yosef
Eventually, Rav Yosef had convinced him to open up and share the following story: “After the war, our family relocated, and, just like everybody else, we started trying to rebuild our lives. However, night after night, my father worried about the infamous Nazi soap bars, which were made from human flesh and sold commercially to European citizens for profit.
“He thought, ‘These were innocent Jews and now their flesh is being used to clean the dirty bodies of their murderers?!’ Eventually, he had had enough and took me with him to Europe to search out every soap bar and give it a proper burial. We went across Europe, getting every last soap bar we could find.
“Finally, at our last house, we met a large and angry German man. With great energy and frustration, he refused to give up his bars of soap. He was about to slam the door in our faces when I said, “Wait! We had just travelled across the entire Europe, gathering every last soap bar. You’re the last house. Please, I’m begging you. What do you want from us? I am even willing to give you my only shirt, the one I’m wearing, and walk back in the freezing cold if you’ll give us the soap.
“And... so it was...” Mr. Friedman continued, “I walked back limping in the cold without a shirt, came back to America, and continued living the rest of my life.”
Reprinted from the Parshas Shoftim 5785 email of Torah Sweets.
