THE MYSTERIOUS VISIT

“Did you hear who wants to visit our class?” Moishy asked, as he excitedly waved his hands around. At this, the boys gathered round him and he continued. “Do you remember old Sholom from the print shop, the one that Berele wrote about in the Tzivos Hashem column? I heard from Berele that he is planning on visiting our class!”

“Right, you heard that from me, but I didn’t tell you to announce it to everyone!” I said to Moishy. 

“Neither did you tell me not to tell,” Moishy immediately said in his defense. 

“Okay, if you announced it already, then I’ll tell everyone all the details. Yesterday, I visited Sholom’s print shop after a long break of nearly a month. When Sholom noticed me he smiled and said, ‘What Hashgacha Pratis! I wanted to ask you something and did not know how to reach you.’”

“Nu, Berele, stop keeping us in suspense. Get straight to the interesting details,” demanded Shloimy who could compete with me and Shmuely when it came to curiosity.

“Fine,” I said. “Sholom told me that he had recently received a delivery of something very special that he could sell, but after much thought he decided it wasn’t worth dealing with since it wasn’t a large amount. He wondered what to do with it and then remembered me and Shmuely.

“He really enjoyed our creativity in solving his riddles as you surely remember and was particularly impressed by the Chassidishe chinuch and the anticipation of the Rebbe’s hisgalus that they instill in our yeshiva. So he decided that he wants to visit our class and give what he received in the delivery to each of us personally.”

“Wow! What a surprise!” they all yelled and Moishy did a little dance in the center of the room.

“Wait a minute Berele. There’s one thing you still didn’t say. What is the thing that you keep on referring to as something he received in a delivery? What did he get?”

“I’m sorry,” I answered in an official sounding voice. “For now, he asked that I keep the details a secret. And there’s another little but important thing.”

The excited voices became silent. “I did not speak with our teacher yet, and he has to give his approval before we start planning for old Sholom’s visit.”

“You mean ‘the suspender man,’ suddenly remembered Moishy, who corrected me and added the nickname that we had once used for Sholom.

During recess I spoke with our teacher and then I went back to the class and announced, “Our teacher said it’s okay. Tonight I will go to Sholom’s print shop and confirm with him which day he will come to our class.”

The whooping sounds of joy that my friends made were even louder than before and Moishy danced even faster around me.

On the morning of the day that we had arranged for old Sholom’s visit, we thoroughly cleaned the classroom. The principal told us that Sholom was blessed with ample parnasa and he was one of the regular donors to the yeshiva. Therefore, the principal asked us to do a good job cleaning up.

We worked diligently until it was almost one o’clock, the time old Sholom was supposed to come. I say “was supposed to” because it was already 1:10 and Sholom had not yet appeared. The time continued to pass and it was nearly 1:30 and no Sholom. We began to worry. We hoped nothing happened to him and that it would only be a short, unexpected delay.

Our teacher was about to announce the beginning of the lesson when suddenly, knocks were heard at the classroom door which were followed by the door opening. I sighed with relief when I saw the smiling face of old Sholom. 

“Welcome!” we all said together.

Sholom thanked us and sat down next to the teacher. 

“I want to tell you something,” he began.

“No doubt, you do not understand why I did not come until now. The truth is that I arrived even earlier than the time we arranged.

“At the last minute I decided to come earlier and instead of at 1:00, I came a half an hour earlier, at 12:30. I knocked at the door and no one answered. I realized you were busy preparing for my visit and that is why you did not hear me knock. I tried to open the door but it was locked. I guess you did not want boys from other classes to disturb you.

“Do you know what we can learn from this?”

Sholom continued while ignoring the confused looks on our faces. 

“I knocked at the door and no one answered. I realized you were busy preparing for my visit and that is why you did not hear me knock.”

“Over the generations, especially in the seventh, since the Rebbe accepted the nesius, the Jewish people worked to prepare the world for the coming of Moshiach. That was the case until a little more than twenty years ago, when something very important happened.”

We listened, fascinated, to what Sholom, who it turned out was also a Chassid, had to say. Only the buzzing of a fly could be heard in the classroom. 

“At the Kinus HaShluchim of 5752, the Rebbe announced that we already finished the work of spreading Judaism and the wellsprings of Chassidus which was necessary to prepare the world for Moshiach. If so, you are probably wondering, what is left to do now in the avoda of shlichus? What is our shlichus now?”

Sholom paused, said a bracha and took a drink of water. “The Rebbe said in that sicha that the shlichus of the Rebbe Nasi Doreinu, Moshiach of our generation, to redeem the Jewish people, already began. Therefore, the only shlichus that is left to do is to greet Moshiach, to be ready at any moment to welcome him.

“You can get an idea of how it will look if we continue just to prepare the world so that it is ready for Moshiach from what happened here in your preparations for my visit. Imagine that we are busy transforming the world so it is ready for the coming of Moshiach and suddenly the Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach will appear, without us and the world being ready to greet him.”

As to what happened next in Sholom’s visit and what he gave each of us, you will read about that in the next column.