“I don’t want to learn with you anymore. I don’t want you talk to me at all.”
There is no one whom HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not test. He tests the rich man to see if his hand will be open to the poor, and He tests the poor man to see if he can accept suffering and not get angry, as is said, (Yeshayah 58:7), “And the downtrodden poor you shall bring home”… and if the poor man withstands his test and does not kick, then he will have a double portion in the World to Come, as is said, “For You shall save a poor people…” (Shemos 20:2).
It happened again that week, on Wednesday at exactly four o’clock in the afternoon. Hershel Friedman closed his Gemara, and pushing the shtender aside, stood up and slowly moved toward the door of the beis medrash of Yeshivas Menachem Ozer, Jerusalem.
He moved slowly, hoping the other boys — bent over their Gemaras — wouldn’t notice him. For several weeks he’d been doing this, always on Wednesday, always at the same time, always five minutes after his chavrusa — Binyamin Gletzer — went out.
Hershel stepped out of the beis medrash, closing the door softly behind him, and then broke into a run down the corridor that led to the exit door from the building. His heart was pounding.
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