When the King is Down | Rabbi Yisroel Besser

Seems like a little bit of an unlikely story, but I heard it from the בעל המעשה. The person, the subject of the story told this to me. A very prominent and respected real estate lawyer, a veteran lawyer in New York City for many years. This past summer, there was a famously-documented criminal investigation into Donald Trump. The state of New York was pressing charges for all kinds of violations of things that they felt he had done in the 1980s that were improper. And this gentleman got a request from Trump's legal team, asking him to please write a letter in support of Donald Trump. He had been around then. He had been involved in some of the deals. He understood that there were a lot of mitigating factors, and there was a lot that he could say that could help the case. So he was asked to please write a letter in support of Trump. He was very hesitant to do it, not because he didn't think it was right, he did think it was right, but he felt that it was going to hurt him badly, because in his circles and, you know, in the business circles in which he traveled, most people were not for Trump. They were against Trump. Vehemently so. And he said: If I write that letter, then the media is going to pick it up and say, This well-known lawyer wrote a letter for Mr. Trump. It's going to get out and it's going to cost him, not only socially, but it's going to cost him financially, as well, that means in terms of business, it's going to be a stain on him to show support for Trump. Furthermore, he said, if Trump loses, they're going to get into power. They're going to make me pay for my support of Trump. They're going to come after me and they'll do the same things to me. He was very worried about it. So he said: Okay. He told the person who requested: I'll write you a letter, but not with my name. It won’t be my letterhead, it’ll be on the letterhead of some kind of a legal group he belongs to. The next day, they called him back and they said: No, Mr. Trump said you should write the letter with your name. He understood exactly what was going on. So he asked one of this generation's great Rashei Yeshiva, a very wise man, what to do. This Rosh Yeshiva told him he should write the letter. Not because he saw into the future and said, Because Trump’s for sure going to win. He just said: That's the right thing to do. He thought that mentshlechkeit, that basic Middos, dictated for various reasons, given their relationship and the role that this person had played in the ‘80s in the business that he should write that letter. It was the right thing to do. It was the proper thing to do. So he wrote the letter. Guess what happened? Trump won. So he's a big winner. He came through for the president of the United States, when he was down and out, when he didn't have a friend, when he needed him. It was personally requested, Trump was following what was going on. And he wrote the letter. And I heard this story from him. It made me think about something. There was a fellow named Barzilai HaGiladi. The Gemara in Masechta Shabbos says, He was the exemplar, he was the paragon of decadence, of immorality, he was a נואף, he was a big בעל תאוה. We know another thing about Barzilai HaGiladi. Before Dovid HaMelech died, he told his son, Shlomo, he gave him his will, his צוואה, and he said to him, Make sure that you're good, that you’re kind, Take care of them, take care of Barzilai’s family. Why? כי כן, when I was running away from Avshalom, he took care of me. He was there for me, he had my back. So he was loyal to me when nobody else, at a tough time, he was there for me, you be there for them. Things are not that great for Kvod Shomayim right now. It's a very dark time. The Ribono shel Olam doesn't have a lot of friends in this world. You look at the streets of this world, there's not a lot of places where you see any reflection of His glory. Being there for the King when He's down is the smartest and greatest thing you could do. Somebody who walks down the streets today and says, There's a God. I work for Him, I'm loyal to Him, I'm faithful to Him. Forget how empowering it is. Forget how wise it is. Think what it could do for your future.