Was It Worth the Journey?

Rav Wolff Rosengarten of Zurich related, “My arrival in the Telz yeshivah coincided exactly with a certain controversy there. This naturally interested the bochurim, who gathered in groups to discuss everything that was happening. Once I also listened in, trying to catch what they were saying about the situation in the yeshivah.

“Suddenly I felt a light tap on my shoulder. When I turned my head, I saw a short man with a luminous face, motioning with his finger for me to come over. When I approached, he asked me where I was from, and when I told him Switzerland, he asked how I had reached the yeshivah. I did not understand what he was driving at, but I gave him a detailed reply. I reviewed my journey by train from Switzerland to Germany, how many kilometers I had traveled and how many hours it took, and then from Germany on to Lithuania, while he kept asking about distances and travel times.

“When I finished, he looked at me with his piercing eyes and asked, ‘Was it worth all that great bother just to hear this nonsense?’

“Later I found out that the speaker was Rav Mordechai Pogramansky. His words penetrated deep into my heart, and they still echo in my ears. Was this what I had come from Switzerland for?

“From then on I was bound to him with bonds of love, from the days in the Telz yeshivah, where I spent much time learning and talking with him in learning, to the end of his life.”