Here’s a story from “The Elephant in the Room”, by Rabbi Ron Yitzchak Eisenman p. 147:
For twelve years I had the privilege of being an eighth grade rebbe at a yeshiva day school in Northern New Jersey…
The boys in my class never saw zekeinim, elders. They almost never saw a Brooklyn alter yid (elderly Jew) with a long white beard and pei’os…
Therefore, one of the things I did as an eighth grade rebbe was organise a trip to Williamsburg to see some heilege Yidden (holy Jews). We would daven in school and learn a little and then board the bus to Williamsburg, arriving in Brooklyn at about 11 a.m., and I would show the boys the chassidic shuls and batei midrash of the neighborhood.
One year we arrived at one of the main neighborhood shuls at about 11:30 a.m. As we looked around and admired the shul, we saw ten to fifteen men in various parts of the davening. Some were donning their tefillin; others were shuckling and swaying; most of them were praying. I didn’t think much of this, since I knew one could find a minyan for shacharis (morning prayers) in this city until late in the morning.
As we left the shul, Avi, one of the more naïve of the boys, asked me, “Rebbe, are all these men tzaddikim?”
I looked at him and realized he was not being sarcastic at all; he was totally serious. “I don’t know, but why are you asking?”
“Rebbe, you taught us that nowadays only great tzaddikim like the Vilna Gaon wear tallis and tefillin the entire day. So when I saw these men in shul at 11:30 in their tallis and tefillin, I figured that they must be tzaddikim!”
A Jewish boy sees Jewish men who act Jewish and are davening – so they must be tzaddikim. Why else would they be in tallis and tefillin at 11:30 a.m.?
I was very touched by Avi’s sincere naïvetè. His profound sense of belief in the goodness of each and every Yid touched me to the core of my being.
Avi considered those who dress like tzaddikim as tzaddikim. There is something so pristine and beautiful to this worldview.
I often wish I still felt this way.
