How to Best Experience Sirocco
Click here for Hebrew text.
The Yahrzeit of Reb David Shlomo Ibshitz of Sirocco z‘l (d. 1779) is commemorated on the 22nd of Cheshvan. The following meise / hasidic tale appeared in Sefer HaHasidut, Meah Tzadikim, Raphael, Yitzchak, 1961, Tel Aviv. (Freely translated by Gabbai Seth Fishman.)
His Distance From The People of Sirocco
When Rabbi Dovid Shlomo was sitting on the “Throne” of the Rabbinate in Sirocco, he cut no slack for the people of his town. He was chastising them with things that are between a person and God, and when it was between a person and his fellow, he would speak reproaches to them. And he would say:
“As towns stack up, Sirocco has very little.”
When he made Aliyah to the Land of Israel, all the citizens of the town came out to be with him: Man, woman and child. Not a single infant was left in its cradle.
A story: He and others of Sirocco once went out to the outskirts of the town, Rabbi Dovid Shlomo turned his face toward the town of no redeeming qualities, Sirocco, and said:
“What a nice town this!”
The citizens of the town heard and were surprised:
“But indeed, our Rabbi said: ‘As towns stack up, Sirocco has very little?'”
“Things that I said, I said indeed,” Rabbi Dovid Shlomo answered. “How nice she is, this Sirocco, but only at those times when you are elsewhere.”
(From generation to generation.)