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צבי

The messy house

Dad, used to tell a story about a young yeshiva boy who married the choice of his one and only heart, but very quickly got in the way of his wife not being as tidy as he expected. Not that she was a mess, on the contrary, she was very diligent and orderly, but it bothered him that she did not always arrange the socks exactly according to the pairs.


One day the young man went to his rabbi in the beit midrash and told him that it was very difficult for him with his wife. So much so that it bothers him that he is thinking of divorcing her. The rabbi replied, "Come to my house today at five o'clock in the afternoon and we will talk about it."


Here comes the fun part that Dad would extend long and dramatic minutes for the enjoyment of all listeners

The rabbi returned home, talked to his wife calmly and they both called the children to the living room "We have a task for you, we have to do it quickly and finish by five". The children who were used to respecting their father and in any case there was no need to expedite them, listened to the details of the task.


The rabbi says to his eldest son, "Yankele, I want you to take all the plates and utensils out of the kitchen cupboards and scatter them throughout the house."

The son looks at his father in astonishment, but the rabbi is already in the middle of handing out a task to his three-year-old son. "Isn't it true that father and mother do not allow chocolate to be smeared on the wall?" "I want you and your sister to take the chocolate spread and spread it on the walls in the hallway, then take out all the toys and throw them on the floor."


While the child smiles for his enjoyment of the dream come true, the rabbi is already adding more siblings.


And Dad goes on to describe and dramatize the celebration and we enjoy and roll with laughter

"Israel, you and Tamar will turn over all the chairs, make sure there is no standing chair left in the house, then scatter socks everywhere, take out all the drawers in the kitchen and scatter them on the floor throughout the house as well.


The children were already convinced that their father had "gone crazy" but hurried to do as he was told and immediately went to work. They worked hard, scattered, turned and smeared. The rabbi and his wife helped the children drop the tables on their side, turn the carts over and pour all the contents of the cupboards in the house.


At five to five, when the floor of the house was barely visible, the rabbi and his wife sent their children outside and carefully approached the book at the end of the apartment with a book and cups of tea, where they waited.


At exactly five o'clock, the punctual student knocks on the door, and after a few knocks he hears a faint "remote" sound coming. The guy strains and barely opens the door, looking terrified into the space of the house.


"Rabbi?" The guy exclaims hesitantly.

The rabbi replies, "Come in, we are in the room."


The student tries to take a step down a hallway laden with upside-down tables and chairs, using one hand on the right wall of the hallway when suddenly the hand is smeared with chocolate, he almost falls and hurries to help with the other hand smeared with jam. The young heifer stumbles and slips on a banana peel and falls straight into the dirty diaper. After he manages to get up and fall several times, the student barely measures and somehow manages to finally reach his rabbi who is sitting comfortably on the floor at the end of the room with his wife.


The rabbi looks at his stunned student, smiles broadly and invites the student to deflect the pile of stinking clothes the children have taken out of the laundry basket. The student sits down and sees the radiant love of the rabbi and his wife who were in the middle of a joint study, and while unsettled the rabbi turns to him "Beauty you came, remind me what you wanted us to talk about?"


The student who did not know his mind replied "Ah, it ... does not matter ... it has already worked out, thank you." He quickly left the rabbi's room, tried to skip over the upside-down table, which was smeared with butter, fell into an open box of tacks and refrained from crying out loud. The shocked student stood on an unstable chair and fell into a bowl of flour.


At the end the young heifer managed to get out of the house. After he shook himself a little he ran quickly to his wife, gave her a big hug and told her how much he loved her and how much he appreciated her.


Zvi Horowitz



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