A Yid shared with me: The greatest chizuk I’ve ever received came to me from a story I heard about Reb Mendel Futerfas.
Reb Mendel sat in a Siberian prison for ten years for the “crime” of disseminating Yiddishkeit.
He was imprisoned together with all types of Gentiles, each of whom was depressed and confined by sadness. Only one singular individual sat there with a constant smile on his face: Reb Mendel.
Once when the Gentiles were whiling away their time, one of them suddenly turned to Reb Mendel and said: “Hey, Jew, I think before you came here you were homeless.”
“Why do you think so?” Reb Mendel asked him.
“The only one who seems happy with his situation here is you,” the Gentile responded. “That’s why I came to the conclusion that it’s surely better for you now than it was before you came here. So you used to be homeless, and now you have a bed and food, and that’s why you’re pleased.”
“You are gravely mistaken,” Reb Mendel told him. “Baruch Hashem, I have a wife and children, I had a respectable position in the community, and I was also not lacking financially.”
The goy would not let up. “If so, please explain to me, how do you walk around all the time with a smile on your face?”
Reb Mendel turned to each of the people in the group and asked what had been his source of livelihood. Each of them answered in turn. One was a contractor, another a real estate agent, the third was a bank manager, and the man sitting near him was an architect.
Then Reb Mendel began a second round and asked each of the prisoners what their plans for the future had been. The contractor wanted to build the main street in Moscow, the real estate agent had been in touch with some of the wealthiest men in Russia and planned on a million-ruble deal, the bank manager was planning on opening another twenty branches throughout the country, and the architect was dreaming of getting work in the planning of a huge governmental building.
“Here lies the secret,” Reb Mendel told them. Everyone had plans, and when the black coach arrived to take them to prison, all their dreams blew up in their faces.
“I am a Jew, and I believe in the Divine plan that Hakadosh Baruch Hu designs for every Jew. A person’s life runs exactly according to these plans. I did not have any dreams or plans that blew up. The place where I am right now is an exact part of the design of my life. When this exact plan comes to be, I am immeasurably happy and pleased.”
This was the secret of Reb Mendel’s constant smile, and this is the secret of the smile of every Yid. It is the smile of one who knows that he’s living exactly according to the Divine plan.
Gut Shabbat
Pinchas Shefer
ד"בס
