Who Needs to Apologize to Whom

A hunger permeated Yeshivas Novardok in Bialystok. It was a hunger and thirst not for bread or water but for devar Hashem, Torah and mussar. Nonetheless, bochurim still need to eat, and the impoverished conditions of the yeshiva caused the bochurim to go literally hungry and to sate themselves on words of Torah between one slice of bread and another.

Shabbos was the worst. The yeshiva accepted Shabbos early, and the seuda concluded by five thirty. The entire seuda consisted of one slice of challa and a piece of gefilte fish. The bochurim congregated in the home of Rav Avrohom Yaffen, the Rosh Yeshiva, which, like Avrohom Avinu's tent, was always open to everyone. The bochurim treated it like home. They came and went as they pleased, slept on mattresses in the living room, and often entered the kitchen and helped themselves to what little there was.

The mussar shmuess was over by ten that evening, and the bochurim were left hungry. They turned to Rav Yankele Galinsky and asked him to find a solution. He entered the Rosh Yeshiva's kitchen and came back with a treasure: an entire challa and a jar of honey. The bochurim happily ate their fill, and afterward Rav Yankel's conscience began to bother him. Surely the Rebbetzin would miss the jar of honey. Indeed, the next day she turned the house upside down looking for it, and Rav Yankel Galinsky was ashamed to admit the theft. He kept putting off the confession until an opportune moment would present itself.

Then came the war, and miraculously he survived. After the war he did indeed meet the Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Yaffen, and the Rebbetzin, and he apologized to her.

"It is I who need to beg your forgiveness and apologize," exclaimed Rebbetzin Yaffen. "I had a jar of honey. I should have shared it with the bochurim. Who deserved it more than you? I should have given you everything."

The Rosh Yeshiva's home belonged to the bochurim, and he himself would never take from the yeshiva. Once, he asked Rav Yankel Galinsky to take some coins and buy some bread and salted herring fillet for his family. Rav Yankele asked the Rosh Yeshiva why he did not take these provisions from the yeshiva kitchen, where they were available.

"That is the yeshiva's kitchen," answered Rav Avrohom Yaffen. "I and my family are hungry, but so are the bochurim. If I take fish from the yeshiva's kitchen, that means that some bochur might go hungry and not have food to eat. How could my family and I eat if he were to go hungry?"