The Candles of the Chevra Kadisha

One day, everyone in the household of the holy Chasam Sofer fell ill. Among them was his six-year-old son Shmuel Binyamin, whose illness grew worse until his life was in danger. Everyone davened for him and pledged tzedakah, and they added the name Avrohom to his name. In the course of his life he suffered some five to seven severe, life-threatening illnesses.

The last of these illnesses reached its peak, and the doctors concluded that the end was near. Members of the Chevra Kadisha were called in to perform the final rites, and they lit candles and said tefillos. The physicians turned to the Chasam Sofer and said, “We know you are a holy man. If your prayers go unanswered, there is no hope.”

The Chasam Sofer stood up and began to daven beside the bookcase that held all his writings and manuscripts of his Torah. Suddenly the sick child cried out, “Shema Yisroel,” and the Chasam Sofer answered him. The doctors said, “Now we see how holy you are, and our hope is restored.” “I never gave up hope myself,” said the Chasam Sofer.

Seeing the child’s recovery, the Chevra Kadisha put out the candles and left with a sense of relief. Others heard the tzaddik say quietly, “For one yovel, my prayers have been answered.” And so it was. His son, the Kesav Sofer, lived another fifty years from that day, though he never fully regained vigorous health. He carried physical pain throughout his life, a ba’al yissurim whose suffering, it is said, atoned for his generation.

At the Kesav Sofer’s bar mitzvah, after he gave a wonderful derashah filled with his own chiddushim, he received the customary gifts. One was a silver box from the scholar Rav Ber Frank. When the young man opened it, he found wax candles, and he asked Rav Ber what such a strange gift could mean.

“My child,” Rav Ber answered, “these are your candles. They are the very candles the Chevra Kadisha prepared for you all those years ago. Now they are yours. The word ner, candle, has become ron, joy, from candles for the dead to a song of simchah and light. May the song of the morning star be your melody, and may you shine forth like the morning light and illuminate the whole world like the noonday sun.” The candles were kept in the family for years and passed down from generation to generation.

Rav Yitzchok Aharon Landsberg, the Rav of Grossvardein, said in his hesped for the Kesav Sofer that he remembered him from childhood, when he studied in the Pressburg yeshiva. “We all recognized his greatness. Even at nine years old he davened with tears. He behaved like a true tzaddik yesod olam.”