“Trash?! You call this trash?! Do you know how much chesed was performed through this door?”
His mother had been making some long overdue repairs to the house over the last few months, Reb Chaim said, and she realized that it was time to replace the front door, which had endured several decades of Chicago winters.
The only day the contractor had any availability was, of course, Erev Yom Kippur. On the designated day the repairmen came, removed the old door, replaced it with a new one, and went on their way.
Just a few hours before Kol Nidrei, as Reb Chaim approached his parents’ home, he spotted a dear friend and neighbor, Reb Yitzy Weiss, in the alley behind the house. He stared as his friend, together with some helpers, schlepped the glass arch that used to adorn the top of the old door onto his pickup truck.
Bewildered, Reb Chaim approached.
“Why,” he asked, “are you rummaging through our trash?”
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