“For one ruble I have but one deal for you,” offered the diamond merchant. “I am ready to sell you my Olam Haba’ah!”
“Done deal!” replied Reb Mendel instantly.
The gleeful merchant drew up a formal certificate of sale and accepted the man’s ruble in exchange. Transaction concluded, Reb Mendel left with signed receipt in hand and settled in a remote area of the open space to learn from the Gemara he had brought along with him. Having divested himself of his last ruble, he had nothing further to scavenge for.
The wife of the diamond merchant soon arrived to find the group still jolly over the joke they had played on their discernibly impoverished client. Upon discovering what had transpired between her husband and the buyer, she shuddered and exclaimed, “You what??? You mean to tell me you divested yourself of your Olam Haba’ah? I will not live with you under one roof! Grant me a get and I’ll be on my way!”
The befuddled merchant who was smiling no more began to stammer that it had all been a lark, but his wife would have none of it and insisted she could not live with a man who would be foolish enough to sell his Olam Haba’ah.
The seriousness of his dilemma sinking in, the merchant sent one of his employees scurrying to find the man and bring him back to their stall. Reb Mendel was soon located and hauled back to the diamond merchant – who promptly asked him to return the sales certificate in exchange for the ruble, as the whole affair was meant in jest.
A somber Reb Mendel declined the new offer and declared business to be business. The merchant reacted by offering Reb Mendel ten rubles to cancel the sale, but Reb Mendel countered by stating, “I don’t deal in such puny amounts and will accept nothing under 1,000 ruble.”
The merchant was fit to be tied and flew into a rage, as his wife stood to the side observing the goings-on. At this point she interjected: “If this young man should ask you for 5,000 ruble you’d have no choice but to redeem your Olam Haba’ah!”
The merchant now upped his offer to 100 ruble but Reb Mendel wasn’t buying. He furthermore let the irate huckster know that he was far from a naive nobody but had simply fallen on hard times. Hearing of Reb Mendel’s quandary, the merchant softened his stance and agreed to give him 1,000 ruble.
When the wife learned that Reb Mendel had followed the counsel of the Apter Rav, she personally visited the Ohev Yisroel to tell him how pleased she was to have been able to help the chassid in his time of great need.
“Is my husband’s Olam Haba’ah really worth the sum of 1,000 ruble?” she then asked the rebbe.
The Apter Rav smiled. “When he first sold his Olam Haba’ah, Reb Mendel didn’t get that great a bargain because it was hardly worth even one ruble. By the second transaction, however, when your husband bought it back, his Olam Haba’ah had increased in value far above the 1,000 ruble he paid to reacquire it.”
The real splendor of our Pesach Sedarim lies not in the glittering silver our tables are bedecked with but in the joy we bring others as we ensure that Yidden everywhere have the provisions to make theirs – and all of ours – a truly sweet Pesach.