A close family friend passed away at a young age. My father and I came to the house of mourning and we sat down with those who had come to console the family. The deceased was a modest person, an active and talented man who was very kind, who did not shirk from doing labor that was not considered especially honorable. He did everything with joy, and even with a hint of mischief, with modesty and an open heart. Now, after his death from a serious illness, there was silence in the house of mourning. Now and then somebody would ask a quiet question or two, and the story of the man's sickness would be repeated again and again.
And then my father began to tell a story to all of those present, and, listening closely, I could see how it helped us all to see the deceased in a new light, as a very righteous and uplifting person.
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My father began to talk about the Rebbe from Slonim. One time the door of the Beit Midrash in Slonim was closed, and it was clear that it was locked from the inside. The people knocked on the door, but nobody answered. A small boy went inside through a narrow opening, and he quickly found out what the "problem" was. He heard a noise from the direction of the toilet, and what he found there would be burned in his memory forever – The Rebbe himself was crouching down near an open sewer, and his holy hand was poking into the filth. It was true that the gabbai had been warning for a long time that the students were causing blockages in the sewer, and that he had threatened to close the Beit Midrash if the problem was not solved. And that was why the Rebbe was attempting to open up the sewer by himself, to prevent the students from being harmed. When the Rebbe saw the child, he turned to him and made him swear that he would not reveal what he had seen until after the Rebbe passed away.
And then the Rebbe turned to the boy and said – "King David asks" – but my father specifically said this in Yiddish, "ehr fregt," as if to repeat the holy sounds coming from the mouth of the righteous Rebbe. "Who will rise up to the Mountain of G-d and who will stand up at the place of His holiness?" [Tehillim 24]. "Ehr fregt und ehr enfert" – he asks and he replies – "One whose hands are clean and whose heart is pure." My father called out, "Clean hands – here they are!" And he lifted up a hand, showing part of his arm underneath the sleeve, giving us a brief moment to imagine the filthy hand of the Rebbe. "And that is what 'a clean hand' means!" And then he added, "A pure heart – vehr vaist, vehr vaist – who can tell, who can tell?"
* * * * * *
When my father repeated the words "who can tell" from the mouth of the Rebbe of Slonim, all the listeners nodded their heads in agreement, and they let him drop his arm slowly, a sign that the story was over. And we could all feel a new link that had just been formed between the filthy hand of the righteous man and the hand of the newly-deceased neighbor. Ever so slowly, a flow of stories began to rise up among those who had come to comfort the mourners, describing the kind acts of the man, and how he never hesitated to dirty his hands. They told how he cared for the sick feet of an elderly woman, and how he accompanied his labor with joy and laughter. And now we could all directly feel how the filth was transformed into the very highest level of cleanliness. The story was able to open up the blocked sewer and release a clean flow of love and kindness.
