Maasei Emunim: A Story About Amen and Tefillah
When it came to helping another, Rabbi Yaakov Schwartz never hesitated. And so, when he heard that one of his friends was sick and needed complex surgery in a major hospital in America, he didn’t think twice and offered to accompany him. The doctors emphasized that the patient’s condition was very complex, and therefore he could not be left alone for even a moment. Rabbi Schwartz, with his characteristic devotion, took upon himself this task whole heartedly and they set out.
The hospital was very large, comprising of numerous buildings on a huge campus, and it was not easy to find their way around. With everything involved, Rabbi Schwartz devotedly fulfilled his role of not leaving the patient for even a moment.
On Shabbos, there was a downturn in the patient’s condition. Rabbi Schwartz hurried to summon the doctor, who ordered a series of comprehensive tests. Within minutes, two orderlies entered the room, grasped the patient’s bed and began rolling it towards the department where the tests would be taken. They left the room – Rabbi Schwartz on their heels; they walked down the long corridors – and he followed; they went from one floor to the next – and he kept up with them, making sure not to leave the patient alone for a moment.
At some point, the orderlies stopped at a nurses’ station. There was a long line of patients also waiting impatiently for their turns.
As he sought a comfortable place to sit and wait with the patient, Rabbi Schwartz noticed an elderly woman lying on a bed on the other side of the waiting room, and motioning to him with her hand. He approached her bed and asked how she was faring. When he heard that she was Jewish, he warmly wished her a good Shabbos, and that she get well quickly, with the special nusach used on Shabbos: “Shabbos hi milizok urefuah sheleimah kerovah lavo.”
Time passed, the line was crawling along, and there seemed no end in sight. A glance at the patient’s face led Rabbi Schwartz to the conclusion that in order to prevent a further deterioration in his condition, he had to eat something. But the patient had not yet heard Kiddush, and knowing him, Rabb Schwartz was aware that he would not put a thing in his mouth before Kiddush. Having no choice, Rabbi Schwartz hurried back to the room to bring the bottle of wine and a cup.
Within a short time, he was back with his friend; he poured the wine into the cup and began to make Kiddush in a loud voice. Despite the large crowd of patients in the waiting area, his voice was loud enough to fill it as he was mekadash the Shabbos and then made a brachah on the wine. At the end, he heard the amen that his sick friend replied, along with another amen – which came in a loud voice from the other side of the waiting room.
He raised surprised eyes to the direction from where he heard the amen and discovered that the woman who had previously motioned to him had her eyes closed with fervency, and realized that she was the one who had answered that resounding amen.
He drank from the cup, made a mezonos and tasted the cake in front of him. While his sick friend also sipped from the wine and ate some cake, Rabbi Schwartz hummed the Shabbos zemiros, and noticed the entire time that the old lady was looking at him longingly, with an ethereal expression on her face.
His curiosity mounted: Who was this special woman? Perhaps she was a distinguished rebbetzin, the wife of a talmid chacham?!
He rose from his place, crossed the room and approached her with respect and asked where she was from and what she did. To his surprise, she related that she had been raised in a traditional Jewish home in Europe, but during the Holocaust, her parents had left her among gentiles, alone, and she’d been lost to her people.
“I haven’t heard a tefillah in more than fifty years,” the woman related tearfully, “I haven’t heard a single brachah all these years. The brachah that you made on the wine aroused within me very old childhood memories, and when I merited to answer amen, I felt like that amen filled my entire being and was carrying me back home, to where I came from.”
The tears flowed freely down the woman’s face, and Rabbi Schwartz also felt tears in his own eyes.
A nurse announced the name of the patient that Rabbi Schwartz was accompanying and he hurriedly wished the woman a refuah sheleimah, and then entered the room with his friend. Baruch Hashem, the test results were normal, and the patient was feeling much better by this time.
When he emerged from the room, Rabbi Schwartz sought out the old woman to see how she was doing, but when he came over to her bed, he was shocked to find that in the short time he had been in the exam room, the woman had passed away, and she was now covered with a sheet.
Once again, he felt hot tears on his cheeks: Fifty years of isolation and estrangement from the Eternal People and one big amen that had resounded and filled her heart. “Yesh koneh olamo b’amen achas,” he whispered to himself.
