Life was hard in the village of Chernestra (Chernyy Ostrov), Ukraine, in the early 20th century. So hard that Yisroel Dov Waxman, whom everyone called Berel, decided to leave his wife, Rochel, and growing family behind for America. He hoped to be able to bring in enough money to feed his family, and perhaps even have them join him one day on America’s faraway shores.
Before Berel boarded the train that would take him to the port city, where a steamship would take him to New York, Berel’s father, Meshulem Zushia, pulled him aside for a few moments.
“My son,” said the elder man, “I want you to swear to me that no matter what happens, you will never, ever work on Shabbat, our holy day.”1
A devout chassid, Berel was taken aback. Would my father even suspect that I would break Shabbat? he wondered to himself. Yet he shook his father’s hand, gravely promising never to work on the holy day.
Upon his arrival in New York, he went to the address of a landsman, a fellow from the same village who had immigrated to New York. The landsman was an overseer in one of the many sweatshops on the Lower East Side. The fellow gave him a job pressing shirts. The work was hard, and Berel would work from early in the morning to late at night for six days a week. Every Friday he would take a few pennies from his meager earnings to buy some groceries for Shabbat and the coming week. The rest he saved for his family.
Spring turned to summer, and summer became fall. The sun began setting earlier, and soon Berel realized that he would need to take off Friday afternoon as well, since Shabbat begins before sundown. Knowing that he would probably lose his job, he decided not to tell his boss that he would need to leave early until Friday afternoon, hoping to at least walk out with one last week’s earnings. Friday came, and with fear in his heart Berel told his boss that he would need to leave early because Shabbat would soon arrive. Disgusted, his boss threw Berel’s ironing board down into the street and told him never to come back.
Berel hurried into the street and retrieved his board. Where would he go? Shabbat was coming, and he had no time to take his ironing board to his boarding house before Shabbat would begin and he would no longer be allowed to carry. “I stood there in middle of the street staring at my only possible means to support my family, and wondered what I would do with it,” he would later tell.
In desperation he dashed into the nearest store, a Chinese laundry, and asked them to please keep his ironing board. Anxious yet relieved, he strolled over to the nearest synagogue to welcome the Shabbat Queen.
It was a difficult Shabbat. Berel was all alone in a strange country with no source of income. But his faith in G‑d was strong.
Shabbat ended, and Berel traced his footsteps back to the laundry. He asked the attendant behind the counter if perhaps he would return the ironing board, knowing full well that this person could deny ever having taken it. To his relief, the attendant handed it to him without a question.
As he walked down the street to no place in particular, he heard a voice calling. “I see that you have an ironing board,” a strange man said. “You know, I have a lot of extra pressing work to be done right now. Can you please work for me? I can use a good fellow to work overtime.”
That week Berel worked as much as he could, knowing that come Friday afternoon he would probably lose this job as well.
At the end of the week, Berel’s new boss handed out envelopes to all the workers. Berel took a look inside his envelope and was shocked. There was much more there than he had earned at his previous place of employment.
“Sir,” he said, “it seems that you made a mistake and gave me the wrong envelope.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said the man, “I did not make a mistake. I’ll take care of your overtime soon as well.”
A short conversation ensued, and Berel realized that his “friend,” his old employer, had been taking advantage of him and was paying him a fraction of what he deserved for his regular hours, and nothing at all for his extra hours.
“At that moment it struck me,” he would later tell his children. “If I would have kept my old job and worked on Shabbat, I would have lost not only my share in the world to come, but my rightful portion of this world as well!”
Berel kept that job until he was able to find something better, and several years later he brought over his wife and children to join him in New York.
Now, 100 years later, Berel’s grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren keep Shabbat (and much more!), just like he did so many years before.
I heard this story from my father-in-law, Rabbi Nachman Levine, who heard it from his father-in-law, Yitzchok Waxman, Berel’s youngest son.
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