Once a shoemaker came to the rabbi from Ger and said:
- Tell me, what should I do with my morning prayer? My clients are poor people, they only have one pair of shoes. I take their shoes to repair in the evening and work most of the night. I don’t have time to finish everything by dawn, but people need shoes before they start work. What should I do with morning prayer?
- How have you prayed so far?
“Sometimes I say a quick prayer and get back to work, but then I feel uneasy. Sometimes I have to skip prayer altogether. In this case, I also feel a sense of some kind of loss, and every time I pick up a shoe hammer, I can almost hear my heart sigh: “How unlucky am I; I don’t have any time for morning prayer!”
“If I were God,” answered the rabbi, “then this sigh would be more valuable to me than the prayer itself.”
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru