With thanks to Hashem, I was living in the same apartment for fifteen years. This was a rented apartment; I did not have an apartment of my own, but I preferred to see the cup as half full and to thank Hashem for the fact that ever since I had come to live in the apartment I did not have to move to another street or even to another floor.
One day, one of my neighbors complained that someone had attached a pipe to his water main. No one knew who did this, but once my neighbor found out that this had happened, a volcano erupted. On me.
The neighbor was sure that I was at fault. It was so clear to him that he did not even bother finding out or asking whether I had actually done it. He came over to me and immediately began screaming about my lack of consideration and my selfishness. He screamed that I had no idea what I had done, what I had caused, how many mishaps, problems and losses were liable to happen because of this connection to his water main.
I did not have to listen to his explanation in order to understand how severe the problem was. It was enough for me to hear the tone in which he spoke. This type of outburst is a severe problem on its own, and it was liable to undermine all the peace in the building.
I did not want to play along with this volcano, and I did not manage to get in a word edgewise about the simple fact that I was not the one who had connected the pipe. So I kept quiet and did not say one word – and I had what to say. Whoever knows me knows that when I have what to say, I say it. But this time, I understood that it was not possible to get in even one syllable without its causing yet another outburst.
So I kept quiet. The neighbors were witness to the jumble of screams that landed on me. They saw me standing there helplessly and probably thought that the neighbor was right. Here I had nothing to answer. But I knew the truth, the deeper truth, that now it was a time to keep quiet and allow the embarrassment to be a kapparah for me.
Several days later, the neighbor who had actually connected the pipe came over to me and apologized. The truth is that while my neighbor was yelling at me, I had no thoughts about getting any apology for the embarrassment that I suffered at the hands of my angry neighbor. In the end the neighbor who was angry at me would also apologize for his outburst, although he continued to accuse me of connecting
