When my father passed away in May of 2015, hundreds of people came to visit me, my mother, and my siblings.
One visitor arrived with a smile and a story I’d never heard.
The man was a rabbi — the rabbi who ran the yeshiva my siblings and I attended.
“In around 1971 or so, your father was looking for a job. It had been several months, and the job situation was not good.”
“I set him up with someone from the city to get a job as a building inspector. It wasn’t much, but it was a job.”
The rabbi smiled and shook his head.
“One day I get a call from the head of the department where your father was applying. While filling out the final paperwork so he could begin work, there was a question asking about his high school graduation dates. He wrote down that he did not graduate. I said, ‘Sam, no one has records from those days. Just tell them you graduated and you can get the job.’ He said, ‘No, I will not lie just to get the job. I’ll go get my GED, and then I will have my high school diploma.’ That is what he did.”
“That sounds like my father,” I said. “He left school to work and help feed the family. It was 1927 or so.”
“Okay, so he went and got his GED. He came back to me, and I called that man about the job — and was told that job had been taken. But another job had opened up, and it was a higher-paying position. He applied, and he got the job.”
The rabbi beamed. “He was such an honest man that several years later, when he needed money to start his travel business, I immediately said yes.”
That business is fifty years old now, and it’s still going.
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