It’s My Nose!

Reb Yitzchak is a survivor. Early one morning, well before sunrise, I noticed that his shel rosh (tefillin head piece) had slipped to the side. I reached up to straighten it for him. He laughed, as he usually does, and said, “It’s not my tefillin that’s crooked, it’s my nose!”

I looked at his nose and saw what he meant. It’s odd… but I have known him for many years, and I had never noticed that his nose was crooked.

“What happened?” I asked.

He said, “A nazi smashed me in the face with a club when I was a little boy.”

I winced and thought, “This guy went through all that, yet he smiles all the time.”

I guess you can either be bitter that such a thing happened to you, as a lot of guys are, or you can be happy that it’s over. I thought back to a couple of miserable things that I went through. I shook my head, smiled a little, and thought, “Thank G-d, they’re over.”