I started reading it on Rosh Hashana and finished it on Yom Kippur - I highly recommend the book Shlomie! (Artscroll). He wasn't the usual rosh yeshiva, mashgiach, or rebbe that Artscroll biographies are about. He was a balabus who lived in Flatbush who was a vilde chaya as a boy and went from yeshiva to yeshiva to yeshiva. Today, he would be drugged for ADHD. His good heart and yiras shomayim were always apparent, even when he was unable to sit in a classroom.
He went on to become extremely wealthy and a huge baal tzedaka. His greatness was not merely in being able to write checks (though that is a great thing). He loved people and loved making people happy. He was constantly alert to how to help people in ways that had nothing to do with money. Another aspect of his greatness was the fact that even though he could barely sit long enough to learn, he had regular learning sedarim and was machshiv Torah and talmidei chachamim. He sought to grow spiritually and kept moving further away from a materialistic lifestyle.
He is an inspiration for those who were not a success in yeshiva and an inspiration to all when it comes to loving and pursuing chesed. It's a book about a "regular guy," who with all his fun-loving geshmak-keit, was quite extraordinary.
You say, " Today, he would be drugged for ADHD"!
ReplyDeleteHow true! Imagine how easily principals and teachers can today destroy a person's life, and all because the Medical Mafiosa needs more money, so they push drugs even on children, with new-found pseudo "diagnoses" and baloney "disorders". The psyche-iatrists and -ologists ought to be the ones taking these drugs!