Paying His Last Respects
I stood beside a man who was at his father’s deathbed. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to encourage the man to do teshuvah.
“See what has become of your father. He never merited observing Torah during his lifetime. He now lies in the throes of death. Would you like to use these last moments to help him?” I asked.
My words pierced the heart of the son. Weeping bitterly, he resolved to take upon himself the mitzvot of kashrut and tefillin. In those moments, a verse from Eichah came to me. There (1:15), it says, “He proclaimed a Mo’ed (set time) against me.” When a Jew does teshuvah and accepts the yoke of Heaven upon himself, his deeds produce a great joy in Heaven, the joy of the Mo’adim (which can also mean holidays).
Just as this young man undertook kashrut and tefillin, I felt that, on High, they were celebrating his decision to do teshuvah. I realized that his arousal to teshuvah came in the wake of his father’s imminent demise. And his father, too, gained from this act, even though he had not educated his son in the way of Torah.
