Today is the 15th yahrtzeit of my father in law R' Chaim Tzvi ben Eliyahu.
Some lessons from his life:
1] He did not grow up in an observant home. He was inspired to become religious when he heard his Professor in medical school talk about this accident that happened in the human body and then another accident and then yet another etc. etc. All of these accidents allow for us to exist. He thought that maybe the likelihood of so many accidents being by accident is very very remote. When you role the dice and get double sixes ten thousand times in a row - you know that the thing is rigged. There are BILLIONS of accidents that happen/ed in a very limited time frame that allowed for life on the planet. So he found Hashem. A fulfillment of the pasuk "ומבשרי אחזה אלו-ה" - From my flesh I see Hashem.
2] He was a doctor which was a lucrative profession back in the 1960's, 70's and 80's. Oddly enough, material possessions meant very little to him. He seemed to make just enough to get by. Nothing more. Like not an extra dollar. I obviously didn't know what he was making. I just observed his lifestyle and heard him say that he didn't have very much. Funny, when I decided to marry my wife, I thought that she was a doctor's daughter, so I have the side benefit of marring into a wealthy family. That wasn't my motivation to marry her but it didn't hurt to add to her desirability. I later found out, doctors daughter - yes, money - no. And Baruch Hashem. It was better that way....]. His pleasure in life came from helping people, reading, writing, going to shul, talking about science, philosophy, Gemara, Halacha etc, etc, [not necessarily in that order]. Matters of the intellect and of the spirit and not of the flesh.
So he found Hashem through the body [so to speak] and devoted his life to the spirit.
He left a successful practice in Cleveland where he was a respected member of the community to come to a country where he didn't speak the language and the culture was very foreign to him together with his wife and [then] five children. Why? Because he believed that it was the right thing to do - even though he had a hundred reasons [many of them spiritual] not to.
He was a mohel who performed over 800 brissim - all for free. Many of them on adult Russian immigrants.
There is a lot to learn from him.
