Every single person in the room was transfixed. Reuven had never seen anyone speak this way, so honest and raw
For the first few minutes of Heshy’s speech, Reuven Stagler was uncomfortable. He had expected a regular devar Torah, maybe a joke or two, a story about a gadol. The usual.
He had not expected this. But once it became obvious that Heshy Brucker was turning what was meant to be a conventional neighborhood meeting into a Ted Talk, Reuven decided that he would not react. He would act leaderly instead, keeping his face stoic, looking straight ahead and showing nothing.
He would not have anyone saying, “Stagler looked like he was going to explode, you should have seen him.”
At a certain point though, he realized that if Heshy wouldn’t stop talking, the meeting would never happen, and he looked around, if only for encouragement to put an end to it. He would do it gracefully, with a note, no making a scene for him.
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