Despite Hunger, Shabbos Comes First
Despite Hunger, Shabbos Comes First
by Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky for Hasidic Archives
The Menkin home was always full of guests, especially on Shabbos. Even during the hardest financial times, Leib Menkin made sure there was food to serve them. He learned to bake bread so he could feed his guests.
The Menkins shared many lessons with their children: “The person who announces his actions accomplishes little. The one who doesn’t talk acts.” “Man does not do; G-d does. A person must do what is needed, while knowing that the task is completed with G-d’s blessing.” “There is no room for depression. Pray to G-d to show you how your challenges are for the good.” And, “You can learn something good even from a gypsy, but you should not learn anything bad even from a great rabbi.”
These lessons became deeply ingrained in the children and helped them endure even the most difficult times.
In the Menkin home, Shabbos was sacrosanct. Hours before sundown, everything was ready. But during a particularly harsh period in the Soviet Union, when drought had left people starving, a peasant arrived at their home one Friday afternoon with a sack of flour to sell.
Bread was in such short supply that even a little flour was hard to come by. Gita was overjoyed. She took the sack and began weighing it to determine the price. But each time she agreed to the peasant’s price, he asked for more, and the negotiations dragged on. They usually managed to find flour eventually, but this sack would have given them enough to get by for a while.
Soon it was nearly Shabbos, and the tension in the home grew. Gita would usually have lit the candles by then, but she was still haggling. When Leib entered the room and saw what was happening, he was taken aback. Then he thanked the peasant and sent him away. “We have no interest in your sack of flour,” he said.
The family spent the entire Shabbos wondering what had happened, but no one dared ask on the day of rest. On Sunday, as they prepared to look for flour so they could bake bread and feed themselves, they finally asked their father why he had turned the peasant away.
“I saw that the man was delaying the sale,” Leib explained. He realized that it was the work of the evil inclination, “the Satan,” offering them flour at the very time they should have been lighting the Shabbos candles. “I’m not interested in doing business with the Satan,” he concluded.
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