Years ago I worked in a religious nursing home in Williamsburg. There was one man around 90 who I’ll call Shmuel, who liked sharing words of Torah and attending my Oneg Shabbos program on Friday mornings. One Friday morning, about two minutes from starting, and with a big crowd in the day room, I noticed that Shmuel wasn’t there. Telling the group I would be back soon I walked to Shmuel’s room, and when I got there I saw him lying on his bed, wearing his suit, tie and shoes, staring up at the ceiling. I asked, “Aren’t you coming to the Oneg Shabbos?” With a hurting sound in his voice he said,, “I am not going anywhere.” “What happened?'” He said under his breath, “The aide came in this morning and insulted me and since then I don’t want to do anything.” He seemed so locked into his bad mood and I did have people waiting for me. But, I wanted to at least try to motivate him to come to this program he loves. So I changed the subject.
I said, “Shmuel, you never told me what you did for a living.” He said, “What difference does it make?” I told him that I wanted to know. He begrudgingly said, “I went around collecting the change from the washers and dryers in apartments all over Brooklyn.” I asked, “What was the most interesting thing that ever happened to you?” He smiled briefly, and said. “One day, I was in the basement of a building and I had just finished collecting the change there and was about to leave when I saw money on the ground. I picked it up and it was two one-hundred-dollar bills in a rubber band. I wanted to find its owner and return it but I knew that would take time. I went out to the street and found a pay phone and called my boss and asked permission to wait at the building to hopefully return the money.
My boss told me that I could stay as long as I want, to midnight if need be, as long as I had all of the change from all of the buildings on his desk by 9 a.m. the following morning. So I went back and waited by the washing machines and a few minutes later a woman came in crying, “I lost the rent money. $200. My husband is going to be so upset with me. I told the lady, ‘You can stop crying. Here is the money.’ When I handed it to her she was so happy and she thanked me over and over again.” (As he’s telling me this part of the story I see the energy coming back to his face.) He went on. “It made me feel so good to help her.” And I loved what he did next. This seemingly immovable person, with energy, got off the bed, and said “Let’s go to Oneg Shabbos.” I happily followed him out the room. If he would have kept that money, 45 years later, sad, in his nursing room bed, it would have absolutely no power to help him. But the kind deed he did stretched across 45 years, energized him, and gave him the oomph to get to that Oneg Shabbos program.
