Rabbi Yisroel Reisman
The Chut Hameshulish is an extraordinary sefer that details the biography of Rabbi Akiva Eiger, the Chasam Sofer, and the Ksav Sofer. It says that the Chasam Sofer had a custom of having talmidim coming to his home on Thursday nights, and he would learn Chumash with Ramban. As is well-known to those who learned about the Chasam Sofer, the Ramban was especially close to the Chasam Sofer's heart. It seems he felt that his gilgul haneshama was somehow attached to the Ramban. He would learn Chumash with Ramban every Thursday night.
At this stage, he had a son, Shimon, who was then a little boy – he would be known later on as the Sheivet Sofer, the Rav of Krakow – and the little boy would sit on his father's lap as his father learned Chumash with Ramban in his house with his talmidim.
The Chasam Sofer said, “How can a shifcha at the Yam Suf see more than what Yechezkel Ben Buzi saw? It is just mind-boggling that an ordinary person could see so much at the time of Yam Suf.” He expressed amazement.
At that point, little Shimon Sofer spoke up and said, “Tatty, let me say a teretz.” He said the following: “If you want to send a letter to someone, you send the letter with the maid in our house, who is illiterate. You don't have to seal the envelope. You just give it to her to deliver. She will not read it because she is unable to read it. On the other hand, if you send the letter with one of your talmidim, and you want to be sure that it stays confidential, you would seal the envelope. So the same thing happened at the Yam. HKB"H revealed Himself to Klal Yisrael. The maid was there, and she saw it, too, but she didn't know what she was seeing; she didn't know what to do with it because she was illiterate.”
In the Chut Hameshulish, it says that when Shimon Sofer said this, his father dismissed it and made a joke. He took off a rabbinic yarmulke, turned it inside out, and put it playfully on the child's head. When I read this in the Chut Hameshulish, it seemed incredible to me. What is wrong with such a brilliant answer?
I saw recently in a sefer put out on Sefer Shemos that someone asked the Mattesdorfer Rav, Rav Shmuel Ehrenfeld alav hashalom, this question. What is going on? Rav Shimon Sofer gave such a nice pshat, and it was dismissed? The Mattesdorfer Rav said that indeed, it is a beautiful pshat, but his father was afraid of ayin hora, and that is the reason that he playfully dismissed it. Interesting! That means that the pshat is worthy of being repeated. Although I don't know how old this young boy was, from the story, it seems that he couldn't have been much older than 6, 7, or 8 years old. So here we have a dvar Torah on the parsha from a little boy. How beautiful!
