Post Selichot Post

Selichot just ended. I walked in a few minutes late and there were about 500 people in the room and 1 empty box with torn covers and random lose pages of old old school selichot pamphlets. I bought an English Selichot 12 years ago, but last year it disappeared and this year I forgot that it was gone until I looked right before starting until I remembered that it is no-where to be found.

There were no selichot in sight in the Beit Medrash. I squeezed through the people looked at the bimah - nothing. Looked on the shelf - nothing. Met eyes with a few people and then their eyes went back to the book in their hands. I made my way to the shelves and took a siddur off the siddur shelf so that I could say the Kel Melech Yosheiv and Yud Gimel Midot at least. I stood uncomfortably.

Then a young man spoke to me without words, asking without words if I wanted to share his selichot book. It was less a question, more an organic act of chesed. We held his small blue Artscroll together and kept pace for an hour. I taught this young man years ago when he was a young boy. He was happy to help me. I was so grateful, there are still no words for my feelings about his act of kindness.

There is a story by (I.L. Peretz) that I alluded to in the previous post's title, not knowing I'd see a version of play out soon after I wrote those words. In very short version - it's about a Rebbe who is not around for early morning selichot and the rumors swirl. The detractors say he sleeps late. The devoted followers say he goes up to Heaven to say his selichot. Someone spies him out, follows him to see where he is during selichot time.

The man sees the Rebbe leave his house in the early A.M. dressed in torn pants and a lumberjack jacket with an axe in his hand. He goes to the forest and chops a large bundle of wood. With the wood in his arms he hikes to the edge of town, enters a poor old woman's frigid home, fills and lights her fireplace and listens to her woes. Then he treks home. At three different stages along the way he says the selichot. He reaches his house, changes, gets to shul after selichot but in time for Shacharit. One of the chassidim comes up to him and asks, "Well - does he go to Heaven?" And the man replies, "Even higher."

When Jon G. reached out his selichot book to me he reached Heaven, if not higher.