The Advice That Changed a Rowdy Boy

By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives

Rabbi Shmuel Chefer’s teaching career began in Morocco, where he met the first Chabad Shluchim in the country, who introduced him to who the Rebbe was. Upon his return to Israel in 1957, the Rebbe advised him to continue teaching, and he got a job at the Nehalim Bnei Akiva school.

Among the students at the school was a young boy who came from a broken home. The boy’s father was mentally unstable, and the boy often acted out in class, creating so much chaos that eventually the staff resolved to expel him.

Rabbi Chefer, however, felt uncomfortable with the decision, and wrote to the Rebbe, asking for a blessing for the student.

Expelling the boy was not the solution, the Rebbe replied in the spring of 1959. On the contrary, the Rebbe said, they should give the boy a leadership position.

“For example, put him in charge of the Shabbos gatherings for the small children,” the Rebbe advised. Having young children look up to him and follow his instructions would improve his self-esteem, the Rebbe wrote, and his own misbehavior would naturally “fall to the side.”

Understanding that perhaps no such gathering existed in the city, the Rebbe advised them to organize one specifically so that the boy could run it.

In response to Rabbi Chefer’s request that he pray for the student, the Rebbe wrote, “When you do things [to remedy the situation] in the natural course, it creates a vessel to receive G-d’s blessings, which are above nature.”

The Rebbe’s advice was carried out. The student’s behavior improved dramatically, and he graduated from the school while simultaneously serving as a counselor in various youth programs. Rabbi Chefer concludes that the boy later became the principal of a school.

Find Hasidic Archives latest books on HasidicArchives.com Dear Rebbe and SHADAR Touching Hearts, One Person at a Time