Giver of Blessings
He was also known for giving blessings that were fulfilled. Once a woman who had had three Caesarean sections was told that her next child would be born by Caesarean as well. She went to Abba Shaul and demanded, "I won't leave until the Rav guarantees me that I'll have a natural birth." He agreed. After the woman left, Abba Shaul's brother asked him, "How can you guarantee that?"
"I can't guarantee anything," he replied, "but what should I do? She wouldn't leave!"
Sure enough, the woman had a natural birth. When her husband came to the synagogue to announce the "miracle," Abba Shaul complained, "They are making me into an Admor!"
When his shamash (assistant) asked him why his blessings were always effective, he replied, "If you love everyone in Klal Yisrael, you can do it, too." To someone else, he explained, "God told Abraham, 'I will bless those who bless you.' When people come to me, they kiss my hand. They are blessing me. If someone blesses a Jew, they are blessed in return."
Read more about this topic: Ben Zion Abba Shaul
Famous quotes containing the words giver and/or blessings:
“A noble person confers no such gift as his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it produces the truest gratitude. Perhaps it is only essential to friendship that some vital trust should have been reposed by the one in the other. I feel addressed and probed even to the remotest parts of my being when one nobly shows, even in trivial things, an implicit faith in me.... A threat or a curse may be forgotten, but this mild trust translates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great Estates and Titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to be given to fools, for ‘tis only to them that they are blessings.”
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