About eighty years ago, in the American city of Williamsburg, there lived a poor widow with an only son. Due to her extreme poverty, she was unable to send her son to a cheder and instead enrolled him in the local public school. Each evening, she would sit with him to teach him the Hebrew letters and how to pray from a siddur.
When the boy turned twelve, he heard of a cheder attended solely by Jewish children who studied Torah, and he decided that he, too, wished to learn there. However, his mother had no money to pay for transportation to the far side of the city, nor did he even own a coat to shield him from the bitter cold. Still, the orphaned boy insisted on going to learn Torah. Having no alternative, his mother permitted him to walk there on foot.
He trudged for over two hours through the biting cold, without a coat upon him. When he finally arrived at the Talmud Torah building, soaked through, he immediately went to the principal’s office and asked to be admitted to the cheder to study Torah. The principal was astonished — never before had a child come alone — and, wishing to assess him, asked, “What do you know? On what could we test you?”
The boy replied, “I know nothing, except a little from the siddur.”
“If so,” said the principal, “you are not suited for our school.”
The boy pleaded to be admitted into the class of the youngest children, so that he could begin his studies like everyone else. But the principal responded that there was no room even in that class.
The boy then said, “Would you at least write me a letter stating that I wished to learn, but there was no space for me?”
The principal was puzzled and asked why he needed such a letter.
The boy answered: “I am an orphan, and when I come to the World of Truth, my father will surely ask me why I did not go to learn Torah. If I tell him that I wanted to but the principal would not accept me, my father might not believe me. Therefore, I request that the honorable principal write it for me in his own hand.”
Naturally, upon hearing this, the principal accepted the boy into the cheder — and that boy grew up to become a great leader among the Jewish people.
When a person becomes a metzora (one afflicted with biblical leprosy), he suffers great humiliation. Yet the Torah further commands him (13:45): ’וטמא טמא יקרא’ - ’He shall call out: “Impure! Impure!”’ — compelling him to heap additional shame upon himself. Despite the hardship this entails, he must surrender his own will to the will of Hashem Yisbarach.
And so it is with every commandment of the Torah: even when it is difficult or uncomfortable for us, we are called to nullify our own desires and fulfill the will of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. For it was through this very power of faith that we received the Torah — when we nullified our own reasoning and declared with absolute trust (Shemos 24:7): ’נעשה ונשמע’ - “We will do and we will hear!”
