The Human Side of the Story

For the week ending 31 March 2012 / 7 Nisan 5772

The Missing Pesach Silver

by Rabbi Mendel Weinbach zt'l
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In the little Lithuanian town of Vabolninkas there lived a saintly woman by the name of Batsheva Shach. Her charitable deeds were legendary. Despite her own limited means she would deliver baskets of food at the doors of poor families in town and quickly depart before anyone became aware of her good deed.

Her charitable activities reached their peak when the need arose to provide funds for the wedding of an orphaned girl. As she racked her brain for some way to help the poor kallah, her eyes fell upon the closed cabinet containing silver vessels that her husband had given her as an outright gift. These were precious vessels that were used only on Pesach and she was sentimentally attached to them. Without even informing her husband she opened the cabinet and delivered the vessels into the hands of the trustees collecting for the wedding.

When Pesach came and her husband opened the cabinet in order to decorate the Seder table, he asked his wife where the vessels were. Her reply was that those vessels helped establish a Jewish home.

This was the woman whose son, Rabbi Eliezer Shach, was destined to become a leader of world Jewry.

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