Story of the week (By Yehuda Z. Klitnick)
The Shamash who lighted the candles with purity performed a greater Mitzvah
The great Gaon and Tzaddik Rabbi Yehuda Assad was born in the city of Aszod near Budapest in the year 1796 to a poor family. His father R’ Yisroel Elenboigen, was a simple and pious Yid, earned his living being a tailor. Unfortunately, R’ Yisroel passed away young and left his young son Yehuda an orphan at the age of eight. Young Yehuda amazed the crowd at the funeral with a brilliant eulogy. After several years, his mother Charna brought him to the home of Rabbi Yehoshua Falk Bichler, a student of the Chasam Sofer. Rav Bichler noticed the brilliancy of Yehuda, raised him and taught him Shas and Poskim. By the age of 18, Yehuda was proficient in Shas, Shulchan Aruch, and its commentaries.
A wealthy Yid from Szerdahely offered him his daughter Esther, as well as full support. Rav Yehuda agreed and married Esther. He sat and learned for four years undisturbed from any obstacles, and elevated himself to great levels in Torah. Rav Yehuda always recounted how those four years were the best times in his life. His Rebbe the great Gaon Rav Mordechai Benet, urged Rav Yehuda to be a Rav and when the city of Ratto needed a Rav, despite the fact that two of the Chasam Sofer’s students wanted the position, Rav Mordechai recommended Rav Yehuda as the Rav. In 1831, at the age of thirty, he became Rabbi of Ratto, followed by Semnitz in 1834. Later on, he moved back to Szerdahely.
Many miracles were performed by Rabbi Yehuda Assad. In his introduction to his Sefer Divrei Mharia on the Torah, there are many elevating stories of the Rav. In Szerdahely, the shamash of the Shul was a simple and wholehearted person that every day when he would light the candles in Shul, he would say, For the sake of unifying the Name of Hashem, I am prepared and ready to perform the commandment of “honoring Hashem with lights,” and I am intending by lighting the candles in the Shul to unify all the intentions accomplished during the lighting of the candles in the Beit Hamikdash.” His words would be uttered with great concentration and wholehearted purity.
The congregants would gather to watch the scenario and were awed by the lighting performed with wholehearted purity. Once, the butcher of the town happened to come to the Shul just when the shamash was lighting the candles, and the awesome performance inspired him so greatly that he began to envy the shamash’s tremendous merit. The butcher strode over to him and asked him, “Are you willing to sell me the merit of this tremendous mitzvah of lighting the candles?” The butcher also mentioned a very large sum of money that he would pay him if he was prepared to make a deal with him.
The shamash, who knew the value of the special mitzvah that he was privileged to perform, firmly refused to relinquish the mitzvah to the butcher. But the butcher did not give up, and every day he would come to the Beit Haknesset and press the shamash, pleading with him to let him have the mitzvah. The butcher begged him so much that the shamash decided to approach Rabbi Yehuda Assad and consult with him about what he should do. When the Rabbi Yehuda Assad heard the story, he advised the shamash to offer the mitzvah to the butcher for the price of a gold coin each day. This was considered a very large sum of money. “But,” Rabbi Yehuda Assad added, “do not use the money that the butcher will give you. Rather, bring the money to me, and I will save it for you.”
The Shamash, a pious person didn’t object and obeyed the Rabbi of the city and did as he was told. So, each day the butcher would pay a gold coin to the shamash, and he would approach with awe to light the candles in the shul. The Shamash, on his part, also fulfilled the other half of Rabbi Yehuda Assad’s advice and brought the gold coin that he received each day to the Rav. Thus, during the next few years, a huge amount of money had accumulated.
One day, a member of the congregation met the butcher in Shul, and the butcher began to cry bitterly. When he asked him what had happened that he was crying so hard, the butcher told him that he had just finalized a shidduch for his daughter, and she got engaged, but he did not have the money that he had promised to pay for her dowry.
When his distressing situation reached the ears of Rabbi Yehuda Assad, the gaon called the shamash of the Beit Haknesset and told him, “Now the time has come to use the money that you saved and to perform a tremendous mitzvah. Take all the money that the butcher gave you throughout the years, which I put aside for you, and give it to the butcher so that he could marry off his daughter with dignity.”
When they counted the golden coins that were saved, Rabbi Yehuda Assad exclaimed, “I testify before heaven and earth that it is the exact sum the butcher promised for his daughter’s dowry—exactly! Not one gold coin more and not one less!” The Rav had the Shamash return to doing the lighting and said the Mitzvah of lighting the candles brought you another great Mitzvah!
It was after midnight, the eve of the 23rd of Sivan 1866. Rabbi Yehuda Assad was in the middle of writing a letter to Rabbi Zusman Sofer when he cried out “my heart”! His wife woke up and found that his heart had stopped and his soul had departed. Hungarian Jewry had lost its crown!
