They're Watching

In Radin the Chofetz Chaim was driven to the yeshivah by Avrumke, a wagon driver with a horse of his own. Years later Rav Kalman Farber, a talmid of the Chofetz Chaim for a decade, stepped into a Tel Aviv shul one Shabbos, in Kiryat Shalom, and found a circle of old men around Avrumke himself, telling stories about his famous passenger.

Avrumke recalled a day when he was driving the Chofetz Chaim to the station. They passed an orchard, where a bough loaded with apples leaned out above the road. Avrumke climbed down from the wagon to take a few. Suddenly the Chofetz Chaim cried out from behind him, They're watching, they're watching.

He jumped back onto the wagon and drove off in a panic, looking in every direction, but there was no one to be seen. He turned to the Rebbe and asked what the warning meant, when nobody was there at all. The Chofetz Chaim answered quietly that of course someone was watching. They were watching from Above.

Avrumke told another story too. Once, on a ride, the Chofetz Chaim proposed that they study one chapter of Mishnah together. The Chofetz Chaim recited the mishnah by heart, and Avrumke repeated each word after him. When they finished, the Chofetz Chaim smiled and told him that a whole perek was now behind them.