Rebbetzin Riddle: There May Be Another Side To The Story!

Once Rabbi Aryeh Levin attended the funeral of a well-known member of the Jerusalem community, Rabbi Eliezer Rivlin. As the crowd walked toward the cemetery, Reb Aryeh saw Rabbi Rivlin's best friend leave the funeral procession. He entered a flower shop and came out with a pretty flower pot!

"This man was Rabbi Rivlin's closest companion," Reb Aryeh thought. "How could he go shopping at a time like this?"

Reb Aryeh approached the friend and said sternly, "You worked with Rabbi Rivlin for 30 years! He was your best friend! Couldn't you have found a better time to buy a flower pot?"

"I have no choice," the man explained. "Yesterday, someone passed away from a very contagious disease. The doctors wanted to burn all the man's possessions, even his tefillin. I begged the doctors to let me bury his tefillin instead. They only agreed if I would put the tefillin in a clay pot and bury it before noon today. I had to leave Rabbi Rivlin's funeral so that I could do it in time."

Whenever Reb Aryeh told this story, he would say, "From that day on, I've always made it a point to judge other people favorably!"