By Yoni Schwartz
“Once in a while when you’re Chief Rabbi,” said Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, zal, “you have to deal with angry people.” He told over how he once got a very angry letter from a young man who came to his office to register for marriage only to be rejected because his soon-to-be wife was a non-orthodox convert. He wrote to the Rav saying that he’s always talking about inclusion yet here he is shutting them out.
Rabbi Sacks called him up, calmed him down, and explained that if the wife ever decides to go through an orthodox conversion, he will personally oversee it. A while later, they decided to do so.
“That’s when explosion number two occurred.” said the Rav. The young man was raging, “Your beis din expects me to keep Shabbos! I don’t need to keep Shabbos! I’m Jewish already! She needs to keep Shabbos!”
Again, the Rav calmed him down and convinced him to start keeping Shabbos. The conversion went through, and Rabbi Sacks officiated at their wedding.
Shortly after he got another call from the same man, “Chief Rabbi I have got to come around and see you.”
The Rav was thinking, “Oh no. What is it this time?”
The man came around with his wife and said, “Chief Rabbi, I just wanted to thank you for bringing Shabbos into my life. Until now I have been a workaholic. I worked seven days a week. Because of you I now have time for my wife and my family... we’re making friends... because of Shabbos, for the first time I feel part of a community... and you know what? All the work that used to take seven days only takes six now.”
Reprinted from the Parshas Yisro 5785 email of Torah Sweets.