It was the summer of 1977 when my parents took us with them to Los Angeles as my father, Rabbi Dr. J. Immanuel Schochet, went on a speaking tour.
Somewhere mid tour, Rabbi Yonah Fradkin of Chabad S. Diego reached out to my father and asked whether he could deliver an impromptu lecture at his Chabad House.
It was a much longer ride than expected and the audience was particularly small. Needless to say, my father was not pleased. One of the few in the audience was a college kid named Jay who was at a real crossroads in his Jewish life, like many of that era.
He engaged with my father and when the hour was late, my father insisted he had to head back to Los Angeles. Jay said: “I don’t know much about Jewish learning but I do know it says, ‘whoever saves one Jewish life it is as if he has saved an entire world’.” My father shrugged his shoulders and acquiesced. They talked till 2 in the morning.
The following year, my father was back in S. Diego for a properly organized, well-attended lecture. At the end of his talk, he was introduced to the same college kid, Jay. He had since turned his life around and found his way back to his traditional Jewish roots.
My father often retold that story to emphasize to us children the important lesson he learnt. “It’s never about the number,” he would stress. “It’s always about the substance!”
From that day, he insisted, he was never bothered again about how big or small the audience, “because you never know the impact you can have on even one soul in the crowd.”
Fast forward to the summer of 2017.
I am on route to San Diego last night to deliver a lecture for Rabbi Fradkin’s son Eli of Chabad of Coronado Beach, California.
He expressed to me his concern about audience attendance, it being a mid-week, mid-summer etc. I repeated to him, as I had done to numerous others before him, that same story and message from my father.
In the end, the popularity of Rabbi Eli and his wife is such that they had a full house. But it was the gentleman who approached me at the end of my talk that brought tears to my eyes and made my soul brim over. “Hi, my name is Jay….”
Forty years on, he will have married off all his children, all with Jewish spouses. “I don’t normally come out to events as such, but I needed to come here tonight to tell you about the fruits of your father’s labor.”
We had an emotional embrace and he said: “Your dad is looking down right now, and he’s smiling!”
And I thought to myself, you never know the impact you can have on even one soul in the crowd.
Thanks so much for posting this! 🙂
Hatzlacha, Moshiach Now!
B”H
Very nice!
Just wow.