Excerpting: “One Good Turn” by C.B. Weinfeld. Artscroll Mesorah Publications Ltd. 2024. Hardcover. 470 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1422641774.

(Courtesy of Artscroll)

A Potent Brew

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Aryeh hadn’t tampered with my coffee.

Would the story have had a similar ending? Or would things have turned out differently? But I can only conjecture. We are simply players on the field of life, puppets held from Above on a string.

If anything, Aryeh’s story has taught me how little control we have over our destiny, and how Hashem’s will prevails.

My name is Simcha, and I’m an older bachur who works as a sho’el u’meishiv at an upstate yeshivah geared for chassidishe bachurim. One of my least favorite jobs is fielding the inevitable phone calls. Naturally, it’s hard to watch my talmidim get married one after the other, while I am still frustratingly single.

But that’s not the issue with which I’m grappling. My struggle is that I’m constantly walking a tightrope, a fine line between sharing too much and saying too little.

Each time I receive a phone call from a prospective mechutan I break into a sweat, cognizant that the words I choose will possibly affect his entire future.

I had been successfully giving information about my bachurim for several years and have rarely been off the mark. It’s a fine line between being honest and not misleading anyone, and portraying my boys in the best possible light. As the saying goes, “One may not say a lie, but one mustn’t always say the absolute truth.” For example, if a bachur is slightly overweight I wouldn’t call him obese, but full and geshmak. Or if a young man was lively and had a hard time sitting still during the shiur, I would describe him as full of life and chein, a bachur who was eager to help others.

All of these descriptions were true, of course, and if someone were to ask me, point-blank, if said bachur was a masmid, I wouldn’t lie. But I didn’t need to volunteer information unless asked.

All this is just a prelude to Aryeh’s story, which began last winter.

Aryeh Miller was a handsome boy, tall and broad, blessed with a lively and energetic disposition. He was popular among the boys, and had leadership abilities as well. He was an average student, with a moderate amount of zitsfleish, a Yiddish word for one’s ability to sit over one’s studies. Aryeh was quite likable, but he had one issue that drove me bananas. Aryeh was a practical joker, who enjoyed pulling fast ones on bachurim, and sometimes on the staff as well. Since I was only a couple of years older than the boys, I was often the target of their mirth.

I’ll never forget the day I walked into the beis medrash one day before Purim, on an especially blustery afternoon. I hurried over to my shtender, on the far side of the beis medrash, to find a hot cup of coffee already waiting for me. I was very grateful — I usually prepared myself a cup, so that I would remain alert all afternoon, and that day I was running late. The bachurim knew that I didn’t take my coffee with sugar, I liked it bitter, and with only an ounce of milk. They sometimes teased me, calling me ‘bitter-sweet Simcha,’ but I took it in good humor.

“Who prepared the coffee?” I asked, sitting down, making a berachah, and taking an appreciative sip.

I saw the twinkle in Aryeh’s eyes just as I swallowed, and nearly gagged. For someone had spiked my coffee with a heaping amount of salt.

I ran to the sink to wash my mouth, gagging on the sickeningly salty drink, and heard muted snickers behind me. Thirty-three bachurim were chuckling, trying to contain their mirth at my desperate dash to remove the salty phlegm from my throat. Though it was supposed to be a Purim shtick, perhaps in good humor, I didn’t think it was funny.

Nor did the rest of the yeshivah staff.

The Rosh Yeshivah was very upset when he heard what had occurred. It didn’t take long to discover the culprit, our very own Aryeh, who had wanted to make things lively in the yeshivah l’kavod Purim. Instead, he was given a stern lecture and suspended for two days. Aryeh was warned that if he would try that shtick again, he would be sent away from yeshivah for good.

The other bachurim felt very sorry, especially when they realized that they had gone a bit too far, and that my feelings were truly hurt.

To his credit, Aryeh apologized immediately, writing me a heartfelt note asking for mechilah and explaining that it had been meant as a lighthearted Purim joke.

I accepted the apology, telling him I was mochel, but my insides were raw. Why had Aryeh thought I was fair game? True, I was a bachur, but I was at least a decade his senior. What was I, chopped liver? And where was the kavod haTorah?

I had to hand it to Aryeh. The suspension had shaken him up a bit and he seemed to become more serious. He stopped pranking others, though he still preferred to make a joke out of things that most people didn’t find funny.

We settled into an uneasy truce, with both of us avoiding each other for the rest of the zman. Which was easier said than done, because the yeshivah was not especially large, and we all shared the same beis medrash for a couple of hours a day. Aryeh and I were cordial, of course, but things weren’t the same between us. I felt belittled, as if I didn’t matter, as if the fact that I was an older bachur made me fair game for ridicule. Until then I had thought I was one of the staff, albeit a few years younger. Now I realized, with stunning clarity, that I had become the target of the boys’ jokes.

Aryeh tried his best to patch things up, including when he distributed a generous cash gift before Pesach and complimented me on my new hat. I nodded, coolly, but wasn’t going to be taken for a ride yet again. The entire debacle left a bitter taste in my mouth (excuse the pun), and had me keep a subconscious distance from the other boys as well.

And then came the day I was subconsciously dreading, the day I received a phone call from a man we’ll call Reb Shaya Fried. Reb Shaya was a successful businessman whose daughter was in shidduchim, and who wanted information about one Aryeh Miller.

“I heard he is quite lebedig,” said Reb Shaya, “but at the same time, he’s responsible and mature, a leader type whom the other boys look up to. Do you agree?”

“Uh, I have a lot of wonderful things to say about Aryeh,” I hedged, “but I can’t talk right now because I’m late for yeshivah. Can I call you back in the evening?”

“Let me call you back,” said Reb Shaya. “I have a tight schedule but I really need the information as soon as possible. The shadchan is on my back.”

I ended the call, my mind awhirl. Though normally I had no lack of wonderful things to say about almost any bachur, there was a subconscious barrier between myself and Aryeh. Try as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to extoll his praises after he had embarrassed me in public.

But I couldn’t bring myself to tell Reb Shaya what had happened a couple of months earlier, because I knew that would be the end of the shidduch. Aryeh had apologized and had mended his behavior. He deserved a fair chance just like anyone else.

I entered the beis medrash a short while later, my mind awhirl. I knew I couldn’t escape the phone call that evening. What was I going to do? I was in such a tizzy that I couldn’t concentrate on anything.

I’m going to tell Reb Shaya that I don’t know Aryeh well enough, and recommend that he ask someone else, I decided. After all, I didn’t have to know every bachur in the yeshivah equally well. I breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that this was an excellent way out of my dilemma. Now I was able to concentrate on my job without any lingering feelings of guilt.

Toward the end of afternoon seder, Aryeh came over to my shtender and gestured that he wanted to speak to me. “In private,” he whispered. I nodded and waited until seder was over. Then the two of us went into an empty classroom.

“Reb Simcha, I have a favor to ask of you,” he whispered urgently, looking over his shoulder to make sure the coast was clear.

“Uh, okay?” I ventured.

“My parents just told me there’s a very good shidduch brewing, that it’s very shayach,” he said. “The future mechutan — er, he will be the mechutan if the shidduch goes through, mentioned to the shadchan that he knows your father very well, and that he will ask you for your opinion. I wanted to ask you, I know you’re still upset about what happened with the coffee, but I wanted to beg you, please, to give top-notch information.”

I was silent for a few moments, my mind awhirl.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he continued desperately. “You’re wondering if it’s the right thing to do, because you don’t want my future wife to have to go through the same thing. But I promise you” — and here there were tears in his eyes — “you have my word that I grew and I learned from the experience. I know I was wrong and I will never do anything like that again. But this shidduch — I don’t want it to fall apart. Can I rely on you? Please?”

I was very moved by his words, and especially by his promise that he had changed. “Aryeh, you have my word,” I told him. “I won’t lie and tell you that I forgot what happened, and that it doesn’t bother me, but I can see you’ve done teshuvah and you deserve a second chance.”

Aryeh and I embraced, and he left the classroom. A few moments later, the phone rang. It was Reb Shaya, right on cue.

I sang Aryeh’s praises, assuring him that he was a solid young man who had grown and matured tremendously during the past year, a bachur with true leadership qualities and the ability to admit his mistakes.

Reb Shaya thanked me profusely, telling me that my opinion mattered a lot to him, and that he would give the shidduch the green light.

Two weeks later, Aryeh celebrated his vort, a joyous occasion attended by all his friends. I wasn’t at the vort, though, because I was busy with a shidduch that had been suggested to me, out of the blue, by a former rebbi. I was engaged a short while later, and my wedding was two days before Aryeh’s.

Coincidence? I think not. After all, I had looked away for a bachur who had wronged me. And in Shamayim, the Master Shadchan had taken notice and done likewise for me as well.

Reprinted from “One Good Turn” by C.B. Weinfeld with permission from the copyright holder, ArtScroll Mesorah Publications.