An avreich from Beit Shemesh relates: I have a job to tidy up and organize the beis medrash in honor of Shabbos. One Thursday as I was working, moving objects around and putting them in their proper places, I heard a conversation between two people who were sitting and learning. One of them, whom I will call Shmuel for the purpose of this story, told his friend: “The electric company was very considerate of me lately and didn’t send me a bill for several months. The problem is that one day they remembered, and now I received a big bill for that whole period of time, amounting to 6,000 shekels.”
“And what are you planning to do?” his friend asked.
“I’m debating if I should ask the electric company to allow me to pay in installments. The fact that they want me to pay in one shot is because of their mistake.”
It wouldn’t have been polite for me to continue listening in to their conversation, and I had to prepare the shul for Shabbos; and so I did not hear the end of the conversation. I hoped, for Shmuel’s sake, that he’d find a solution easily, but I could never have envisioned what would happen an hour later.
The other people who had been learning left for home, and the beis medrash slowly emptied out. At 11 p.m. only the two of us were left – me and Reb Shmuel, who was still learning diligently.
Suddenly, there was loud banging on the door. “Is someone in here? Can you open the door?” a voice called from outside. I went over to open the door, and I found two avreichim standing there together with an American who spoke only English. “Is there someone learning here?” they asked.
“Yes,” I assured them. They came inside, and the American went directly over to Reb Shmuel, took a thousand dollars out of his pocket, and put them into the shocked avreich’s hands.
“We were at a business meeting with him,” the avreichim explained, “and he suddenly stopped us and said he felt that he must give a thousand dollars to someone who is sitting and learning. He literally begged us to take him to a beis medrash in the area that very moment. We told him that on Thursday nights one can find Yidden learning in shul until very late at night, so perhaps it would be better to first conclude our meeting with him – but he insisted. He said must give the money that minute. “Now, without delay!” There was no point arguing about it, because either way, the business meeting had come to a halt, and so we hurried here, to the first beis medrash we could find.”
