Reply To: Rav Wolbe

Someone would regularly drive Rabbi Wolbe home after his weekly Vaad at the Bais

Hamussar.

One week after the Vaad, the Mashgiach approached this man’s vehicle, but the driver

wasn’t there, so the Mashgiach stood next to the car and waited for him.

The people who followed Rabbi Wolbe asked him, “Why doesn’t the Mashgiach go into

the car?”

The Mashgiach answered with simplicity,” How can I enter his car, the owner isn’t

here and I wasn’t given permission to enter”.

Heard from R’ Kunz Shlit”a.

[This story is similar to the lesson the Mashgiach learned from his Rebbi R’ Yerucham

Zt”l. Once, when R’ Wolbe came to his Rebbi’s house for a Shiur, he saw that the

clock on the table wasn’t working. He started touching it to see if he can figure

out why it wasn’t working. R’ Yerucham turned to him and said, “The clock is not

working!” Rabbi Wolbe knew that it wasn’t working, in fact that was the reason

he lifted it in the first place! But then R’ Yerucham repeated a second time, “The

clock is not working; it’s broken”. The young Rabbi Wolbe understood that R’ Yerucham

didn’t want him to touch it. Years later, he repeated this story in a Vaad and he

would say, “R’ Yerucham taught us: You can’t touch something that’s not yours even

if…!”]