Seeing the person in front of me
Only as the beggar is leaving do the children notice that he is blind. The rav wonders why they did not see this earlier. Perhaps their hunger had filled their attention. Once they had eaten, they could begin looking at the person who had helped them.
He offers this tentatively. When someone is consumed by his own pain, he may have little room to notice another person’s needs. Relief can make that person visible again. This is a reading of the scene, not an accusation that hungry children should have ignored their need for food.
Now they have a question. How can someone who is blind walk through a thick forest? The story itself notices the surprise: these are small children, yet they are clever enough to wonder about it. Their question remains before them as he goes.
The rav begins to explain the apparent disabilities of the beggars. The blind beggar is not limited to what worldly sight presents. Later, at the wedding, he says that he is not blind at all. The whole span of the world does not amount to the blink of an eye for him. He is very old and still completely young.
That later paragraph also clarifies the actual blessing: the children should be old like him and receive his long life. The opening does not simply bless them with physical blindness. The rav’s language of becoming blind like the beggar anticipates the hidden attainment behind the appearance.
He recalls the Chozeh as a person whose spiritual seeing was greater than ordinary sight, alongside a reported physical limitation. The particular biographical detail remains an oral attribution here. The lesson concerns how worldly appearances can occupy the eyes so fully that the person sees little beyond them.
A shirt, a yarmulke, a pair of trousers, a familiar social type: those can be the first things we notice. The rav describes a tzaddik who sees through the levush, the outer covering, toward the neshamah. Closing one’s eyes to the world’s distractions can make another sort of attention possible.
He connects Moshe’s difficulty speaking with a spiritual level beyond ordinary expression:
וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶל־ה׳ בִּי א־דני לֹא אִישׁ דְּבָרִים אָנֹכִי גַּם מִתְּמוֹל גַּם מִשִּׁלְשֹׁם גַּם מֵאָז דַּבֶּרְךָ אֶל־עַבְדֶּךָ כִּי כְבַד־פֶּה וּכְבַד לָשׁוֹן אָנֹֽכִי׃
Moshe said to Hashem: Please, my Master, I am not a man of words, neither yesterday nor the day before, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue. — Exodus 4:10
The verse plainly describes Moshe as heavy of mouth and tongue. The rav’s homiletic reading considers a greatness that exceeds what speech can express. It does not erase the Torah’s description or turn an ordinary person’s disability into evidence for or against spiritual worth.
The rav also anticipates the sixth beggar’s hands: they seem absent because their work is devoted to holiness rather than ordinary worldly involvement. He associates the seventh beggar’s apparently absent feet with a still greater capacity to dance. Those are his interpretive previews. The seventh day’s account was never revealed, and the detailed sixth-day explanation has not yet been taught in these recordings.
The deaf beggar carries a related lesson. On the second wedding day he says that he is not deaf. The world’s cries of lack do not enter his ears because he lives a good life without that lack. In the rav’s explanation, someone less occupied by worldly chatter can hear the call to return.
Pirkei Avos 6:2 speaks of a voice going out from Har Chorev each day, lamenting the neglect of Torah. The rav joins this with the call of return expressed in Yirmiyahu:
שׁוּבוּ בָּנִים שׁוֹבָבִים אֶרְפָּה מְשׁוּבֹתֵיכֶם הִנְנוּ אָתָנוּ לָךְ כִּי אַתָּה ה׳ אלוקינוּ׃
Return, wayward children; I will heal your waywardness. Here we are, we have come to You, for You are Hashem, our Elokim. — Jeremiah 3:22
The two sources should be heard distinctly. Avos’s daily proclamation is about Torah; “Return, wayward children” is the verse in Yirmiyahu. Together they convey the spiritual summons that a distracted person may fail to notice.
The rav compares this difference in hearing to a high frequency that a dog can hear while a human cannot. The physical example conveys the possibility of a sound beyond one listener’s range. It is an illustration of spiritual receptivity, rather than a scientific explanation of how a bas kol works.
Two stories about hearing and seeing
The rav recalls a recent visit to Rav Dov Kook. Before they entered, the gabbai warned the group that the tzaddik might discern things on a visitor’s face, rebuke someone sharply, or get up and leave. He told stories intended to prepare them for that possibility.
The report belongs to the gabbai, as repeated by the rav. It is not an account of the rav himself being exposed or of a particular visitor being proved guilty. The rav later says that he saw two things during the visit that he did not understand, but he does not explain what they were. There are no further events to supply on his behalf.
His second story concerns Rav Meir Shapiro and the land for Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin. The rav recommends a biography he remembers as having been written by a close talmid before the Holocaust. He is uncertain about several details of the incident and corrects himself while telling it. Those recollections should retain their uncertainty; the precise biography has not been identified here.
In his telling, Rav Meir is traveling with a wealthy man named Eichenbaum. The rav first remembers another surname, then corrects it. He also first mentions fundraising, then recalls that the journey may have concerned an election campaign for the Polish parliament. Rav Meir’s parliamentary service and Shmuel Eichenbaum’s gift of land for the yeshivah are independently documented in Hillel Seidman’s historical account. That support does not settle every detail of the anecdote.
They pass a piece of land that Eichenbaum has bought at a good price. He does not yet have a particular purpose for it. Rav Meir says that he thinks he knows why the land was bought.
Later they return to the field. Rav Meir lies down, places his ear to the ground, and asks Eichenbaum whether he hears what he hears. Eichenbaum hears nothing. Rav Meir describes the voices of Torah and tefillah, talmidei chachamim learning, and people completing Shas. He hears the life for which the land is suited.
He asks for part of the property for the yeshivah. In the story, Eichenbaum gives the whole plot. When his wife learns of the gift, she calls for a din Torah. Rav Meir fears that the property will be lost. But her complaint is different: her husband has taken the zechus for himself, and she wants her share in supporting the makom Torah. The deed is rewritten to include them both.
The rav introduces that ending with uncertainty about the precise details. He also explains how he understands the central scene. Rav Meir was an accomplished fundraiser, but the rav does not think this was merely a device to persuade a donor. He believes Rav Meir genuinely heard something that the other man could not hear. That is the rav’s interpretation of the reported story; the historical record checked here establishes the donation, not the supernatural perception or the court dialogue.
Both accounts return to the same possibility: the person who looks less absorbed in the visible world may have an attention that another person lacks.
Walking through the forest while living differently
The children’s question has a practical form for us. If I close my eyes to what everyone around me is pursuing, how will I make my way through life?
The rav gives concrete examples. A person chooses not to have a smartphone, not to be involved in social media, or not to spend hours discussing business on Shabbos. He fears falling behind. Everyone else seems to be running in the same direction. Can he live differently and still support a family?
The same worry enters business ethics. The rav describes a conversation about taking a client or policy away from another person. The reply was that everyone in the industry does it; that is how the business works. But common practice alone cannot establish that something is right. The details of a particular business question still need a proper halachic ruling.
The beggar shows another possibility. He walks through the forest with the very quality that seems to make the journey impossible. The rav speaks of people who remain honest, keep boundaries, earn a parnassah, and live ordinary responsible lives without joining everything around them.
He stresses that the beggar is walking through the forest. He is not floating above it or wholly cut off from it. The tzaddik lives in the world while remaining able to see its purpose. The task is to bring that awareness into life, work, and responsibility.
These examples express the rav’s counsel and confidence. They are not a promise of a particular income or a universal ruling about every device. The question he is challenging is the assumption that survival requires copying whatever everyone else does.