This story was told by the tzaddik Harav Zev [Velvel] Eidelman, zt”l, who asked to convey through it a simple but important message, to understand and internalize the right way to daven.
The story is about a wondrous tzaddik who lived about 200 years ago; his name was Rav Chaim. He was known for his power of tefillah, and people flocked to him from the surrounding areas to ask that he daven for them. Rav Chaim lived in a remote village, in a small house that he rented from a local poritz.
That poritz, who was an extremely arrogant person, came one day to the tzaddik’s house just at the time when the man was davening. The poritz got off his carriage, knocked at the door, but was not answered. He looked through the window, and was surprised to see the tzaddik standing next to one of the walls, engrossed in his tefillos and oblivious to everything around him.
The poritz had to wait outside the door, but time dragged on and the tzaddik was still davening. The poritz began to get angrier. From time to time, he knocked furiously at the door, but the tzaddik did not move. He continued davening fervently, and after a long while, finally finished. He took three steps back, waited a moment, like a servant taking leave of his master, and then turned to open the door.
The poritz was about to unleash his fury on the tzaddik, but a tiny drop of sanity that he still possessed to control himself, and before he did so, he hissed with anger, combined with insult: “Why?? Why didn’t you open the door the first time I knocked? Why didn’t you open the second, third and fourth time? Don’t you know that I can punish you most severely, and even throw you out of your house?”
The poritz screamed as he shook with fury, but to his astonishment, the tzaddik was neither moved nor frightened. He just answered simply and innocently: “I didn’t open the door because I didn’t hear the knock.”
“How didn’t you hear?” the poritz roared. “I saw you standing pretty close to the door. If you were deaf, you wouldn’t be hearing me now either!”
In response, the tzaddik smiled calmly. He invited the poritz into his home, put a kettle onto the fire, and began to steep tea leaves. He sat the poritz down at the table, and as the tea was cooking, he asked the poritz permission to relate a story:
“A few hundred years ago, in a faraway land, the king sought to find the best carpenter in the land, to build furniture for his palace. Toward that end, he gathered all the carpenters in his kingdom and posed them with a challenge:
He pointed to a sack that had two hundred sparkling new gold coins in it, and promised to give these coins to whoever would, in two weeks, build a wooden box that could contain the coins exactly – not more and not less- and without any space for air.
A few of the carpenters undertook the challenge, and two weeks later, they came to the king’s palace with the ready boxes in hand. The boxes were all examined preliminarily, and each one was found to have one fault or another. Only one was able to meet the challenge: After calculating the dimensions hundreds of times, and after working with precision, he was able to build a small box that meet the criteria.
After a more thorough examination, the carpenter was invited to put the box on the king’s table. The minister in charge began to put the coins from the sack into the box, one after another, until it was time for the last coin. Everyone held their breaths when the minister placed the coin in the box, and like all the others before it, it nestled in there perfectly. The minister was about to close the cover.
But then a problem arose: the cover of the box did not close all the way.
The carpenter paled; he could not believe what he was seeing. Based on all his examinations, the box should have closed. What had happened?
All around, snickering could be heard. Hushed voiced filled the hall and some even went so far as to demand punishment for the carpenter for embarrassing the king. But the carpenter faced them, sure in his heart that this box could close properly.
He closed his eyes for a moment, and then asked permission to try again. Permission was granted, and in front of the eyes of all present, he emptied the box of all the coins. When he finished, he raised the box, and then blew into it with all his strength. Then he replaced the coins. The coins were put in one after another, and wonder of wonders, this time, the cover of the box closed perfectly, to the cheering of the people.
Everyone looked at the carpenter, wondering how this had happened. Instead of an answer, he pressed his finger to the table, and showed the people a small grain of sand that stuck to his finger. ‘This little grain is what prevented the box from closing,’ – he explained. And then he received the full box in his hand; it was given to him. He had met the challenge.”
The tzaddik finished the story and then explained the message to the poritz:
“In the Torah we are told about prayer (Devarim 11:13) “ule’ovdo bechol levavchem” – prayer is service of the heart, and in order for it to be said properly, and accepted, it needs to fill the entire heart. During davening, the heart needs to be empty of everything else. And that is what I do – during my prayers, I leave no room for my ears to hear, my eyes to see and my hands to be busy. My heart is completely dedicated to tefillah, and therefore, with all due respect to the poritz, I simply did not hear the knocking.”
“Do you hear this?” Rav Velvel Eidelman would conclude the story. “The Mishnah (Brachos 30b) writes that the early chassidim would spend one hour preparing for davening and then they would daven. They did this to clear their hearts completely, so that it would be entirely devoted to the service of Hashem, and there would be nothing else there besides tefillah. And we, what can we say about ourselves?!”
Rav Velvel Der Eidelman, p. 360
