A Yid from Kiryat Sefer relates: One day I went to visit my father shlit”a, and I heard something truly amazing from him.
“Your brother was here yesterday, and he gave me regards from my old friend from yeshivah,” Abba told me. “He told me that this friend was zocheh to establish a beautiful mikveh tahorah in a certain city, which services all the people of the city. This is true zikui harabbim every single day!
“I told your brother the beginning of the story”:
The yeshivah where I learned when I was young was located in a small village abroad, where there were barely any Yidden. During bein hazmanim, when the talmidim went home, one could not even find a minyan there. This friend of mine was scrupulous about going to the mikveh before davening every day, but what could he do if in this small village of ours there was no mikveh? The only way to go to the mikveh was to travel to the closest village, and so my friend would get on a bike and travel every day for a quarter of an hour each way in order to immerse himself in the mikveh. It was not easy. It took time and energy, but he would not forgo his practice.
After a while, one of the neighbors informed him that there was supposed to be an underground well in his yard. This was truly a newsflash, because if he had a ma’ayan near the yeshivah he wouldn’t have to make the trek to the neighboring village every day. But in order to make the place suitable for tevillah, he would have to work.
My friend was not fazed by hard work. He got hold of tools, and with his own two hands he dug in the area near the wellspring until he reached the water. He made himself a pit of water, and thus there was now a mikveh near the yeshivah. Of course, no one heated the water or cleaned it up or put in tiles, as in the regular mikva’os that you and I know. It was not a great pleasure to be tovel there, but he was scrupulous about doing so, with mesirus nefesh, each day.
Now, when I hear that he was able to establish a mikveh tahorah and garner tremendous zechuyos as a result, it’s clear to me that there is a connection between this great zechus and his mesirus nefesh as a young man to immerse himself in the mikveh and purify himself before davening.
The reward for a mitzvah is another mitzvah. When we do mitzvos with devotion and with such consistency, we are zocheh to many mitzvos.
