I will never forget that meeting. The days were the Shabbat of 5768. Suddenly his face lit up, and in a moment of clarity he turned as if he were about to tell another story from the myriads that he holds in his sharp memory. "I am preparing a will," he said, his eyes smiling. "To command my sons and my family after me.".
This was not the first time I had the privilege of sitting next to the devout rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel Mordechai Mintz, zt"l, chairman of the Seventh Foundation and secretary general of Agudat Israel. For about eight years, I sat down once a week and wrote down his life story. This time he was alert. More than ever. This time he talked about the will.
He prepared two wills in those hours. One will for his property in this world. One will for his property in the next world. The commonality in both of them was evident in his equanimity, his piety, and his fear of sin that preceded his wisdom. He treated both of them with the same abysmal seriousness that had been his lot all his days.
Want more news, videos and stories? Join the Haredim 10 WhatsApp channel >>
When he finished writing the drafts, he asked me to copy them into a computerized document, while he read them to me word for word. These were very precious moments: with the calmness and clarity of mind that characterized him all his days, he read his own will as if he were reading the will of a third person. Then he came to the matter of the funeral, the burial, and the eulogies.
With excitement and trembling, he explained that a great favor is done to the soul when a person is buried as quickly as possible. They return him to the dust and fulfill the will of the Creator of man from the earth.
Then he added an unusual and simple request. In a way, for a great man of his stature, it is also not easy to fulfill. "I do not want anything written about me, neither at the time of my death nor in the year." Firmly and with burning eyes, he dictated the instruction to me: not to write anything on the tombstone except "P"N HaRachah Rabbi Shmuel Mordechai Mintz among the rabbis of the Hasidic Rabbi Matityahu z"l.".
From decades of toil, activity, public mission, closeness and affection from the great men of Israel, love of Torah and pursuit of Hasidism - he saw nothing worthy of boasting about and enshrining. Only three single words from the poem of the Azinu did he agree to free: "And the land of his people will be destroyed." And that's it.
To my surprise, he broke my ears. A midrash of the Sages says that the commandment of the shemitah can have mercy and take a person out of hell. After his death, I found the things he apparently meant. Thus writes a midrash of Shochar Tov: "If they have paid the tithes and performed the shemitahs and all the commandments commanded in them, at that time they present their deeds to the Holy One, blessed be He. Where are the dead from, as it is said, 'And he will atone for his land with him.' Who atones for his people, his land?".
And he, who was in charge of the 'Seventh Foundation' for five years and in recent years has been active in the 'Walks of the Land' institute that he established and founded to instill the values of the Sabbath and its commandments, was the one appointed by the late Rabbi Kommiut to bring about the Seventh Revolution in the Holy Land - he asked to come before the Supreme Court with only this privilege.
