An avreich from Bnei Brak relates:
I learned in a good yeshivah with an adjacent dormitory, and b’chasdei Hashem I got an amazing, rare room, one with only two beds in it. While my friends were dealing with three or four roommates, I had one nice roommate. We got along excellently, and the privacy was very pleasant for me.
That’s how it was until my roommate decided he needed a change. He’d connected with another bachur from the shiur and wanted to room with him. He knew that if he’d approach the mashgiach and innocently express his request, he’d have no chance. The yeshivah wouldn’t change a bachur’s room because of a friendship. Today he’d request a change, tomorrow his friend would request a change, and the chaos that would result from the many requests would be difficult for both staff and bachurim. In order to request a move from one room to another one needed a serious reason, and if there wasn’t one, then a bachur could create one.
That’s exactly what my roommate did. He approached the mashgiach and complained about me that I set the alarm clock too early for him and this was messing up his sedarim. The mashgiach listened attentively and promised to take care of it. Next, he approached me and gently asked me to move to a different room.
I knew the complaints had no basis in reality. Our alarm clocks were synchronized perfectly, and we had roomed together peacefully until now. The complaints were all false. If I had wanted to, I could have responded that I knew exactly what this bachur’s goal was. I could have gone out to war against him and, with great delicacy, ruin his name and make the true facts clear to all.
But I kept quiet. Why? Because I thought about my dear sister, who at the time had been married for four years and had already moved from apartment to apartment six times. In one place the rent was raised too much, in another there was a leak, and in a third there was noise pollution. In each apartment, she and her family suffered another problem that they could not live with. They went from one exile to another, wandered between apartments, and we all davened for them that they would be able to settle peacefully.
Every time they moved I was called in to lend a hand, moving the heavy boxes and furniture. I saw how difficult it was, and how much the lack of stability disrupted the routine of their lives. And so I thought to myself, as I stood before the mashgiach, Now I have an opportunity to ask Hakadosh Baruch Hu that I be spared this pain of moving from one apartment to another after I am zocheh to establish my own home. At those moments when I accepted the mashgiach’s criticism, of which I was innocent, and I was called to gather my belongings and move to another room, I did not say one word. I nodded my head and asked which room I was to move into, and thus the conversation ended.
It wasn’t easy, and not at all pleasant to think of the impression I was making on the mashgiach, as if I were a bachur who did not take others into consideration. But, b’chasdei Hashem, the future stood before my eyes. Better to move now and spare myself wandering in the future. I asked Hakadosh Baruch Hu to help me continue to keep silent and not to let loose a hurtful word in the future either, and along with this I davened for the future, for how my life would be after my chasunah, b’shaah tovah.
And indeed, baruch Hashem, I established my home in the chashuveh city of Bnei Brak, entering a rental apartment of 2.5 rooms. Four children were born to us in this apartment, and when the fifth was born, we felt the apartment had gotten tight. Clearly, we needed a change. My wife started talking about moving to another apartment, but I asked her to wait. I recalled the degrading incident with the mashgiach, and I was sure its influence would last to this day.
Indeed, the incredible occurred. The landlord called to tell me that the entire building was to be renovated and expanded, and he wanted to get in on a process of building, ultimately expanding the apartment by two rooms and an additional service room. He asked us to leave the apartment for only two months while it was being renovated.
It was easy for me to accede to his request, since my wife’s parents welcomed us graciously after her stay in the convalescent home. Within two months we received an excellent, spacious apartment with all the comforts we’d been missing before.
I thought now that they would raise the rent, but at the end of the month the landlord told me, “You’re an avreich. I’m not raising your rent. As much as you paid until now – you’ll continue paying!”
People grow wide-eyed upon hearing this story, but it is the truth. I felt Hakadosh Baruch Hu arranging the apartment for me as though we were in the generation of the desert, when children’s clothing grew to fit them as they grew to become adults. Here too, the apartment grew together with us, as our family grew.
And again, I came to the ever-valid conclusion that one does not lose out from giving in.
