R’ Chaim Kanievsky zt”l once shared a remarkable story about a Jewish merchant who owned a factory which produced closets and coffins. Despite the somber nature of his work, he was a devout Yid who davened three times a day. Yet he had one persistent flaw: he was always late for davening.
The Rav of his shul, who noticed this pattern, gently rebuked him. “If you are so careful to come every day, why not also be careful to come on time?”
The merchant shrugged off the rebuke. “What does it matter?” he replied. “The main thing is that I arrive and manage to catch up the parts that I missed.”
The Rav shook his head, not knowing how to get through to the man.
But one morning, the merchant appeared in shul very early, his face pale and his demeanor humbled. He approached the Rav and confessed, “Rabbi, I have received my punishment, measure for measure. My factory burned down completely, and I know it is because of my lateness to davening.”
The Rav was Surprised
The Rav was taken aback. “How can you know such a thing?” he asked.
The merchant explained: “When the fire broke out, it happened so suddenly that I could hardly believe what I was seeing. One moment everything was quiet, and the next, flames were crawling up the walls like wild animals.”
He described how he ran into the workshop, shouting for help, grabbing whatever he could - buckets, cloths, even a small fire extinguisher mounted near the door. He tried to smother the flames, beating them back with frantic desperation. Workers rushed in with pails of water, splashing and throwing water as fast as they could. “But the fire was faster than we were,” he said. “Every second it grew stronger. It leapt from board to board, from beam to beam. It was as if the fire had a mind of its own.”
Dialing the Fire Department with Shaking Hands
Realizing they were losing control, he grabbed the phone with shaking hands and dialed the fire department. “I told them it was urgent. I told them the building was going up in flames. They said they were on their way.”
He paused, his voice tightening. “And then ... we waited.” With teary emotion, he described those minutes - minutes that felt like hours. The flames roared louder. The roof began to crack. Smoke billowed into the sky like a dark pillar. Neighbors came running with hoses, but the water pressure was weak. “We were fighting with everything we had,” he said. “But the fire didn’t care. It kept climbing, kept spreading. And all the while, I kept looking down the road, waiting for the fire truck.”
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the fire engine appeared, sirens blaring, lights flashing. But by then, the building was already collapsing inward. Flames shot out of the windows like arrows. The firefighters jumped out, unrolled their hoses, and began spraying powerful streams of water, but it was too late.
“There was nothing left to save,” the merchant said quietly. He swallowed hard, remembering the moment he confronted the firefighters. “I yelled at them them, ‘Why did you take so long? Why didn’t you come sooner? You could have saved the building! I called a long time ago!’”
And then came the words that pierced him like a knife: “What does it matter? The main thing is that we arrived.”
“I Felt the World Stop.”
The merchant closed his eyes as he repeated the sentence. “In that moment,” he said, “I felt the world stop. Those were my exact words to you, Rabbi. The very words I used to excuse my lateness to davening. And now I heard them thrown back at me - at the worst moment of my life.” He shook his head slowly. “That’s when I understood. Hashem was speaking to me through the fire. Through the ashes of my factory. I finally understood what it means to be late.”
Reprinted from the Parshas Shemos 5786 email of Rabbi Dovid Hoffman’s Torah Tavlin.
