They Show Us the Way
True Bliss
Rav Chatzkel Levenstein's face shone like the sun at midday, radiating inner joy and contentment. What did he tell his friend Rav Shalom Schwadron? What was the source of the special simchah he was feeling?
"How is the mashgiach?!" Rav Shalom Schwadron greeted Rav Chatzkel Levenstein. "I see that the mashgiach is very excited about something," he continued. "Perhaps the mashgiach can tell me what it's all about?"
Reb Chatzkel was quiet for a moment, but then he began to talk, and he shared with Rav Shalom the innermost feelings of his pure heart:
Before the war, I served as mashgiach in Kletzk, and then, for several years, Hashem gave me the zechus of running the yeshivah. After a while, however, I became a regular yungerman, sitting and learning in Yeshivas Mir.
This was a real adjustment for me. As mashgiach in Kletzk, I got a relatively nice salary, much more than a typical yungerman learning in kollel received. When I lost this position, my financial situation wasn't simple. I actually did not have a cent...and the burden of providing parnassah for the family was completely mine. I needed to feed my children, and there were days that were so difficult that I literally had no idea what I would give them to eat the next day!
Throughout this time, I made a firm decision to simply cast my burden on Hashem and to rely on Him with total bitachon, like a baby in his mother's arms. And Hashem answered me in turn. Every day I experienced constant, open hashgachah. Sometimes I would get a certain sum of money a mere quarter of an hour before I had to return a debt. Hashem sent me food and other basic needs in a variety of ways, and always exactly at the right time.
It was the most amazing period in my life, and I look back on it with longing. Those were days when I experienced the true pleasure and bliss of bitachon in Hashem, that secure feeling of being completely in His Hands, the Hands of our loving, merciful Father. What could be better? There is no way to describe the deep sweetness and pleasure that come from this feeling.
Afterward, things changed again. I became the mashgiach in Lomza, Mir, and then Ponevezh. The salary started coming in regularly again. Then too, of course, I knew that everything is a gift from Hashem, Who provides for us and sustains us. I remembered that the salary was coming merely from Hashem's messengers, but the feeling was not like that bliss of connection and security that came when I had no salary to rely on at all.
"But now," the mashgiach concluded, "the yeshivah is in very difficult financial straits. For a long while, all of us on the staff haven't received any salary at all. An hour ago, I made a cheshbon that for eight months I haven't received any salary, and nonetheless, I feel that I lack for nothing!"
"Once again, I don't really know from where I will have food for the next day, and once again, I feel Hashem's Hand!"
"My dear Reb Shalom, that is the source of my joy. How could I not feel overwhelmed with simchah when I see and feel tangibly how Hashem is taking care of me?"
