Michael - this nugget is for you and for all of you who take time away from ongoing work and life matters to engage in this daily Torah probe:
Heschel makes the following observation:
A Christian scholar who visited Warsaw during the First World War, wrote of a remarkable experience he had there: "Once I noticed a great many coaches on a parking-place, but with no drivers in sight. In my own country I would have known where to look for them. A young Jewish boy showed me the way: in a courtyard, on the second floor, was the shtibl of the Jewish drivers. It consisted of two rooms: one filled with Talmud-volumes, the other a room for prayer. All the drivers were engaged in fervent study and religious discussion...It was then that I found out...that all professions, the bakers, the butchers, the shoemakers, etc., have their own shtibl in the Jewish district; and every free moment which can be taken off from their work is given to the study of the Torah. And when they get together in intimate groups, one urges the other: 'Sog mir a shtickl Torah -- Tell me a little Torah.'"
A.J. Heschel, The Earth is the Lord’s (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1950), pp. 46-47.
Michael - this nugget is for you and for all of you who take time away from ongoing work and life matters to engage in this daily Torah probe:
Heschel makes the following observation:
A Christian scholar who visited Warsaw during the First World War, wrote of a remarkable experience he had there: "Once I noticed a great many coaches on a parking-place, but with no drivers in sight. In my own country I would have known where to look for them. A young Jewish boy showed me the way: in a courtyard, on the second floor, was the shtibl of the Jewish drivers. It consisted of two rooms: one filled with Talmud-volumes, the other a room for prayer. All the drivers were engaged in fervent study and religious discussion...It was then that I found out...that all professions, the bakers, the butchers, the shoemakers, etc., have their own shtibl in the Jewish district; and every free moment which can be taken off from their work is given to the study of the Torah. And when they get together in intimate groups, one urges the other: 'Sog mir a shtickl Torah -- Tell me a little Torah.'"
A.J. Heschel, The Earth is the Lord’s (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1950), pp. 46-47.
Excellent quote from Rabbi Ginsberg. He read that in 1994 at the Knitting Factory.