The Scholar at the Artist’s Door

by Dovid Zaklikowski for Hasidic Archives

It was another day at shacharis in the Jerusalem Zichron Moshe Shul, where the congregants would often end up discussing some topic of Jewish law or thought. One morning, Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik, the dean of Yeshivat Brisk, strongly opined that it was permissible to be lenient in a particular case.

Bentzion Kletzkin, a local artist, differed, taking a more stringent chassidic view and bringing various proofs from Jewish law. Rabbi Soloveitchik listened carefully to what he had to say and then remarked, “What you know, I also know,” and with that, the conversation ended.

The Kletzkin dining room, which also served as the workroom for the father of seventeen, was never boring. As he worked on another piece of art, there was always a customer arriving with a new project or another coming to pick one up. There were also those who simply loved to sit and chat about what was happening in their Jerusalem neighborhood and beyond.

That day, however, Rabbi Soloveitchik appeared at their door. It was a shock for the Kletzkin children, who spent hours watching their father work, to see the famed scholar standing in their father’s studio.

“I came to ask your forgiveness,” he told Mr. Kletzkin. “And when one seeks reconciliation, one must appease the other. So I brought you a present.”

Realizing that he was referring to their morning conversation, the artist immediately said, “I was not hurt, and there is no reason to ask forgiveness.”

But the scholar did not let go. “It makes no difference whether you were hurt,” he said, as he gave him a bar of chocolate, “those were the words that came out of my mouth,” and they were intended to inflict, “I am asking you to forgive me.” He wanted Mr. Kletzkin to do so “with all his heart” and to state it aloud.

Mr. Kletzkin gladly told him that he forgave him, but asked, “Won’t we meet tomorrow at Zichron Moshe? Why did you have to go out of your way and come all the way here?”

The scholar looked at him quizzically and said, “To wait until tomorrow? Really, does that idea even enter one’s mind? Who knows what will happen before tomorrow? To go to sleep without being forgiven?”

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