Lend a hand

Once, an aspiring young Torah scholar came to the Steipler Gaon, Rabbi Yisrael Yaakov Kanievsky zt"l, with a pressing problem. He presented him with a note. "I come home from the yeshiva , and the scene in the house leads me to despair. The table is not set, the kitchen is hardly clean, and the children are not bathed! What should I do? How can I concentrate on my studies when I have such problems?" As he waited for an answer, the aspiring scholar expected the Steipler to advise him how to deal with a wife who was not living up to his standards.

The Steipler looked up from the paper and made a grave face. The young man smiled, for he understood that the Steipler must have realized the severity of the situation. Then the Sage spoke in his heavy Russian-accented Yiddish. "You really want to know what to do?"

The young man nodded eagerly.

The Steipler looked austere.

"Take a broom."

Parsha Parables 3

Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky

Lend a hand, particularly at this time when your wife is overwhelmed with Pesach cleaning.

I had a divorced friend whose son was embarrassed to walk into shul alone without his father. Lend a hand. Offer to take a boy without a father to shul or to help him to study for his gemara test.