Several years ago, as I sat in a soggy Succa in Wilmington, Delaware, with a piece of extremely wet sckca sitting on my nose, I asked Rabbi Chuni Vogel if we could finish our meal inside the confines of his warm, dry, inviting home. As if it were yesterday I remember him looking at me with a knowing smile and saying, “Shloma Yakov, no one ever said a mitzvah had to be easy.”
Throughout out the years, some easy and some more challenging, his words have echoed in my ears, giving me both solace and guidance as the adventure of my life has unfolded. Recently, I went to see my personal physician about a persistent pain in my abdomen. After extensive tests we learned that I had a failing gallbladder and it needed to come out as soon as possible.
On the Saturday before the operation I sat around a table with many of my friends at Chabad of Northern Nevada. We had just finished making Kiddush and were discussing the parsha of the week with a visiting Yeshiva student Yisroel Cutler of Huston, Texas. Yisroel was in Reno helping Rabbi Mendel Cunnin with a summer bar mitzvah camp for several local residents.
During the course of the afternoon I asked the Rabbi how I should handle dovening after the operation. Since the last operation I had was 42 years ago when my tonsils were removed, I figured I’d be laid up for a week and pretty much incapacitated. I wanted to make sure it would be okay if I kept the dovening to a minimum until I recovered. I figured he’d open up an ancient book of Jewish law and show me the paragraph that dealt with illness relieving one of the responsibilities of full dovening until they felt strong enough to fulfill the obligation.
As soon as the question left my lips I saw the same knowing smile appear on his face that I first saw on Rabbi Vogel’s face in the soggy Succah. He waited a moment and then said “Steve, you could lie in bed two or three days and do as much dovening as you feel up to, or you could wrap yourself in tallis and Teffilin and let the power and personal pleasure of dovening help speed up your recovery!” He went on to say, “By pushing yourself to do more than you think, you will recovery faster than you ever imagined. Never do more than you should but try and do more than you think you can.” Translation, no one ever said a mitzvah had to be easy but no one ever said it should hurt either.
The big day came and my doctors did a magnificent job. I went into the hospital that afternoon at 2:00 pm and I was home, snug in my own bed by 7:00 pm. I felt pretty good considering everything. Shortly after I got home I picked up my Siddur and dovened Maariv. I was little light headed but all in all it was a piece of kugel. I went to sleep with a contented smile on my face.
The next morning was VERY different. Everything hurt. My abdomen hurt, my side hurt, my chest hurt, I even thought what little hair I still had on the top of my head ached. My vision was somewhat blurry and I didn’t care if I ever put another morsel of food in my mouth again. After several minutes it was apparent that the wonderful painkillers they had given me at the hospital had worn off. The last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed, put on my tallis and Teffilin and doven. So I just laid there. As I dozed in an out of consciousness, the words of both Rabbis Vogel and Cunnin kept jarring me back to consciousness. “No one ever said a Mitzvah had to be easy. Wrap yourself in your tallis and Teffilin and let the power of dovening speed up your recovery.” Oy veh, even in your dreams these Chabad Rabbis are nothing if not persistent.
After another hour or so of struggling with my physical need to lie in bed like a stone, and my compelling desire to doven Shacharit, I “asked” the Rabbis in my head to be patient for a few moments and slowly, ever so slowly moved my legs to the side of the bed. About a half hour later I managed to get washed, put on some clothes and took out my tallis and Teffilin. It took a looooong time to properly put every thing on and an even longer time to complete the dovening. But when I was done I had to admit, I felt better. Later that day I dovened Mincha and then Maariv. Every time I dovened I felt just a little bit better.
As the days went by the davening got easier and my health improved. The dizziness and blurred vision disappeared quickly and my appetite returned with a vengeance. Wednesday morning I received a telephone call from my new friend Yisroel Cutler. He inquired about my health and then asked if I wanted to get together and learn some Gemmorah. Considering I had never studied a single word of Gemmorah in my life, I was surprised when I heard myself say, “Sure, how does 2:30 pm tomorrow sound?”
We met at the Chabad House and settled down for what I thought would be an easy hour or so of discussion. Of course that comes from a guy who never studied Gemmorah before. The entire discussion revolved around not more than four sentences concerning what one can and cannot do when they find abandoned grains left behind by the owner. Yisroel and I discussed, debated and argued about the myriad commentaries for almost two hours. Forgotten was the pain in my abdomen. Forgotten was the fuzzy vision. Forgotten was the continuing nausea. All were replaced by the joy and satisfaction of this stimulating discussion.
When I left the Chabad House I was a new man. Between the dovening and the learning I was reenergized. I had a spring in my step and a tune on my lips. The Rabbis were right, no one ever said the effort had to be easy and sometimes the more demanding way produces the bigger reward.
By the time Shabbos rolled around I was almost my old self. As we sat around the table at the Kiddush, eating succulent cholent and saying a few l’chaims, I couldn’t help but marvel at how lucky I was to find Chabad, or was it the other way around, oh so many years ago in Palm Springs, California. Coincidence, I think not!
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