Adapted from: Living Higher by Rabbi Binyomin Pruzansky

While learning in Yeshivas Mir Yerushalayim, I witnessed firsthand how the rosh yeshivah, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, who was stricken with Parkinson’s disease, would struggle to deliver his shiur as his entire body shook uncontrollably. However, although he may have been weak and in pain, he was tamid be’simchah, always happy. You heard the joy in his voice, and you felt it in his presence. The Torah he learned and taught gave him so much happiness and koach, enabling him to push above and beyond the norm.

“Ki heim chayeinu ve’orech yameinu.” When Torah is your life, it empowers your days, giving you strength and vitality.

The Ponevezher Rav, Rav Yosef Kahaneman, known as a prince of Torah, was focused on achieving his mission of building Yeshivas Ponevezh in Bnei Brak. Indeed, he merited to build one of the greatest edifices of Torah in the world. In order to accomplish his dream of rebuilding Torah after the war, he frequently traveled to America to raise funds, yet he never appeared burnt out.

On one such trip abroad, he returned to the home of his host, tired and worn out. His host brought him a hot cup of coffee. “Here, this will give you some strength.”

Rav Kahaneman gratefully took the coffee, but replied, “If you really want to give me strength, please give me the number of a wealthy person who can help support my yeshivah; that would be the best thing you could do for me right now.”

The host couldn’t get over it. “How do you keep going? Where did you get this fiery passion? Where did you develop this love of Torah?”

“It all started when I was a little boy of eleven years old,” Rav Kahaneman shared:

It was Purim morning. My mother was in the kitchen baking a cake, and she exclaimed, “I am so excited to bake a cake for the rav of our town. What a zechus to give honor to a tzaddik!” My mother’s excitement affected my father, who said, “I, too, have something for the rav. A peddler recently came through the town selling Gemaros, and I bought a Maseches Bava Basra from him. I know that the rav doesn’t have a full set of Shas in his home, and he is missing a Bava Basra. Now he will have it; how happy he will be.”

My older brother and I went to the rav of the town to deliver the mishloach manos and the gift. My brother held my mother’s cake and I held the Bava Basra. I handed the rav the Bava Basra and his eyes lit up. He kissed it and called out in joy, “How lucky I am, what a treasure, a whole masechta Bava Basra!” Then he danced around the table holding the Gemara, as if it were Simchas Torah and he was dancing with the Sefer Torah.

As the Ponevezher Rav told his host the story, he danced around the table, to demonstrate how the rav had danced. Then he continued.

The rav asked his wife, “Do you also want to give me mishloach manos?”

“Yes, of course,” she answered.

“Great! Yesterday we decided that we would begin our Purim seudah at 5:00 p.m. But if you would be kind enough to push it off until 6:00 p.m., then I can learn from my new Gemara from 5:00 to 6:00, for an uninterrupted hour. That would be the greatest mishloach manos gift in the world.”

The wife agreed and the rav danced around the table again.

“I was only eleven years old when this took place. But at that moment, I was so inspired that I made up my mind to dedicate my life to Torah and put everything I have into it. That is where I derive the inner strength, determination, and drive to build Torah in Eretz Yisrael.”

Sometimes, a seemingly insignificant action can lead to big results. The rav’s simchah and dancing inspired Rav Kahaneman to dedicate his life to building Torah, and thus Yeshivas Ponevezh was born. He became a partner in Rav Kahaneman’s work of building Torah in Eretz Yisrael.

When our homes are infused with true simchah, the simchah of the Torah, it can influence not only our children, but all of Klal Yisrael.