The Whitewash Before Pesach

A young man with severe tuberculosis was staying with a poor householder in Sanz. Before Pesach the householder wanted to whitewash his house, as he did every year. But the doctor had warned him that the young man, whose lungs were badly eaten away, had little time to live in any case, and the smell of the whitewash would hasten his end.

The landlord ran to the Divrei Chaim of Sanz and told him in anguished tones that he could not skip whitewashing for Pesach and so he saw no choice but to turn the sick young man out.

The Rebbe was shaken by the story. After a short pause he asked the man to wait a little while, until the illness passed, and then he would be able to whitewash his house without worry.

The doctor heard what the Rebbe had said and laughed scornfully. But after a few days he had to admit that the patient had improved, and soon after, the young man was found to be fully cured.

The Divrei Chaim waved aside the talk of miracles that was on everyone’s lips. But his grandson Rav Shlomo, the future Bobover Rebbe, went after the doctor and asked, “Nu, what do you have to say now?”

“It seems I was mistaken when I said his lungs were eaten away and had fallen apart,” the doctor replied.

“Why not admit instead that you were wrong to mock the words of my grandfather, the Rebbe of Sanz?” the Bobover pressed.

“If your grandfather can create new lungs, why doesn’t he make the blind see and the mute speak?” the doctor shot back.

“If my grandfather gave sight to the blind, you would have no choice but to repent,” said the Bobover. “But Hashem wants man to have free choice and to choose the good of his own will. That is why a tzaddik performs only the kind of miracle that lets the doctor say, ‘I was mistaken in my diagnosis.’”