asked what he wanted, the miser said that he just wanted to take something from his bag.
At 6am, he again woke everyone up because he said that he needed to take the bag from the hook and replace it with a different bag. This new bag was very large and, a short while later, the homeowner and his family members noticed a terrible odor emanating from the bag. They looked inside and saw that the bag contained the body of a dead cat.
They ran out and found the miser and told him to take his bag but he argued that he owned the nail and he could use it for anything he pleased.
The smell permeated the entire house and had everyone gagging. If that wasn’t enough, the putrid bag began attracting flies and all types of disgusting insects. Left with no other option, the homeowner and his family packed their bags and fled from the house.
When the miser saw that the house was now uninhabited, he moved right in, tossed out the malodorous bag that he had left there, and made himself at home. He now had a large, beautiful home of his own! As he enjoyed his new residence, he proudly told the shadchan, “Nu, didn’t I keep my word? Don’t I now have a nice house of my own!”
The lesson is as follows: The miser is none other than the yeitzer hara. He starts by badgering a person and pestering him to just give in on one “small” thing, to let him have one chumrah or halacha. It tells him, “Why do you need to go to the mikvah every day? That isn’t required by halacha?”
If one obeys it, it then might tell him, “Why don’t you take off your tefillin by Ashrei U’vah L’tzion?”
It then convinces him that he doesn’t need to daven with a minyan, and then says that he doesn’t need to daven the entire tefillah, rather Shema and Shemonah Esrei is enough.
And so it goes. It gets him to stop doing one thing at a time until he has nothing left.
A person must always be careful not to allow the yeitzer hara even a small opening to enter. He cannot be allowed to “hang his nail” in your life! If he wants to remain an upright Jew, he can’t let it trespass into his home at all!
