That morning I was feeling very pressured. In another few days Yom Tov would come, and in the afternoon, when I would come home from kollel and my wife would ask whether I had money for shopping, I would have to answer her. I decided to try to get a loan so that I would have enough to give her.
I hadn’t meant to bother anyone while learning. I entered the coffee room and met another avreich who was preparing coffee for himself. “Do you have any money to lend me?” I asked him. He apologized and said that he did not. While he was talking, another avreich entered the coffee corner and hurriedly prepared himself a hot drink. “Be careful!” I called out.
“Your coffee’s going to spill,” my friend warned him, but this avreich was preoccupied and did not slow down.
“It’ll be fine,” he claimed, and a moment later, as expected, the coffee spilled. On me.
It didn’t just spill on me. It stained my new tzitzis, a nice pair of wool tzitzis I had put on for the first time that very day! My financial situation was quite bleak, and these tzitzis had cost me a lot of money to buy, and now they were already marred by an ugly coffee stain.
The avreich who spilled the coffee was very embarrassed. He’d learned his lesson, and I felt bad for him. I saw how much it bothered him, and now he did not know what to do with himself. I looked at the tzitzis in order to gauge the amount of damage done, and he told me, “I know I ruined them. How much do you want me to pay?”
I wanted to tell him off properly for his behavior and perhaps also to inform him that payment would not atone for the embarrassment and pain, but Hashem gave me strength. I bit my tongue and nothing at all came out of me. “It’s okay,” I told him. “I’ll work it out.”
I did my best to wash out the stain and succeeded in lightening it somewhat. I went back to learning and wondered what to do next. My whole point in coming to the coffee corner was to get a loan, and if I hadn’t been successful, perhaps I should turn to one of the avreichim who were learning.
That second, one of the wealthy avreichim approached me. He does not usually give out money, but this time, “for some reason,” he took 500 shekels out of his pocket, gave them to me, and said, “This is for your Yom Tov expenses.”
I knew that the zechus of my holding back is what stood by me; the zechus of this self-control brought about my yeshuah.
