The Tape Recorder Radio | Rabbi Fischel Schachter

Okay, so by a show of hands only, anyone know what a cassette tape is? Ah, you’re going to reveal your age. So one class once told me, I remember when I was a kid, or he remembers maybe when his father was a kid, like a baby pulls out the tape, you know, schlepps it out. I said: Yeah, that's what it is. You put a pencil in, you turn it right. But what did they do with it? What did they use it for? I said: Never mind. Just wanted to know if you know what it is. I had one of those cassette tapes laying around on my basement floor. My little grandson picked it up and right away went - wheeeeee. I said: How does he know how to do that? Wow. So R’ Nisan Bauman, לרפואה שלמה, let me tell you something about R’ Nisan. Just like you're sure the sun is going to come up in the morning, he was by his Daf Hayomi Shiur, decades and decades, at 5:00 in the morning. He was the encouragement. He was the coffee for everyone. And then he went to work on a van. And he had a tape recorder. Ah, what's a tape recorder? Well, anyway, he had the Shiur of the tape in the tape recorder, and he always held the tape recorder to his ear. And he did this for years and years. The entire way to work in Manhattan on the van, he listened to the Shiur. On the way back, he reviewed the Shiur. If you saw R’ Nisan, he had his tape recorder this way. His family said to him: You know, He has a beautiful family of Bnei Torah. There's iPods, there's digital recorders. We can upgrade you. You can put... This worked for 2,000 years, the Gemara and my tape recorder, it stays this way. He's the happiest person in the world. Upgrade me? I'm happy, as happy as can be. You know, upgrade me to where? And one night, it's winter, it's freezing, and the van drops him off and he’s walking on the street in Avenue J, and he's holding his tape recorder. He's listening to the Shiur. The tape recorder by now was crackling. He didn't want a new tape recorder. This is his tape recorder. Go find a new tape recorder. And he's listening to his Shiur. And he passes the bank. There's nobody on the street. It's freezing. And there's a woman in the bank by the ATM machine, she's withdrawing money, and he sees two people. They don't look like they're preparing their Shabbos Hagadol Drashas. They're waiting for her to walk out, and he realizes this woman is in big trouble. And his tape recorder starts to crackle. And he realizes it sounds a little bit like a radio or a police radio, so he starts talking inside it. And as Hashgacha Pratis would have it, there are sirens coming. It could have been from a fire engine or an ambulance. These two guys looked and they said: Run for it. And they took off and disappeared. To this day, this lady probably doesn't know that R’ Nisan’s tape recorder saved her life. You know something? When you live in a different world and your eyes and your ears are focused on a different world, you don't know how many lives you're saving. You don't know how many members of your family, your neighbors, and probably you yourself.