One late hot summer night, R’ Yisrael Grossberg received a call from a group of former students, requesting access to their report cards. At the time, R’ Yisrael was overseeing curfew in a boy’s camp, but throughout the year, he taught high-school students facing grave challenges in ruchniyus.
“Report cards?” questioned R’ Yisrael. “Why do you want your report cards so late at night?”
“We are standing outside a doughnut shop,” the student explained. “There’s a sign here that says we can get free doughnuts if we received A’s on our report cards. We’re stuck here without any money, and we therefore need to show we got A’s to cash in on the offer.”
Though he didn’t have access to their report cards, neither at camp nor so late, R’ Yisrael was eager to help them and thought of a way to get them their midnight snack.
“Put me on the phone with the clerk,” he requested, which they did. A young woman got on the phone. “Throughout the year,” R’ Yisrael told her, “these students of mine put in all their effort to excel in their learning. They are all deserving of free doughnuts. If you grant my request, my students will make a bracha aloud, and you’ll be able to answer Amen. That’ll be the credit for them.”
“A bracha?” the young woman asked.
Hearing her inquisitive tone, R’ Yisrael thought to himself, “What did I just get myself into?” Till today, R’ Yisrael conveys how he’s not sure how he got the courage to add that last caveat — to add such a condition with a cashier whom he knew nothing of. But he was in for a surprise.
“I know what a bracha is,” she told R’ Yisrael. “As a child, I learned in a day school, and we were taught all about making a bracha. I haven’t heard one in a very long time, and I’ll take great pleasure in listening and responding Amen to one.”
Thus, the clerk agreed to give R’ Yisrael’s students all free doughnuts on the condition that they indeed made a bracha aloud for her to say Amen to.
The story doesn’t stop there.
The next morning, R’ Yisrael got a message from one of those students to tell him the impact of the previous night’s events. “I’m changing my life around.”
R’ Yisrael was astonished. “What? What happened?” he asked.
The student explained that while uttering the bracha, the cashier was visibly inspired by it. She was eyeing them eagerly, barely holding back the Amen from rushing out of her mouth. For the first time, they felt that their mitzvos had value to them. In addition, they were moved by the fact that their Rebbe was so willing to advocate for them, even at such a late hour at night, for something as trivial as free doughnuts. That left an everlasting impact, and today, that student has built a happy family that is sitting and learning in Lakewood Yeshiva.
