The Slow Man
by Yaakov Adam Marin

"Oh!" thought the Slow Man, as he woke up.
"It's morning."

The sunlight came through the window and
warmed the Slow Man's face.

"Thank You, Hashem, for returning my soul..."
the Slow Man said.

"Thank You for warming me with sunlight."

He sat up in bed, very slowly,
and stretched his arms toward the sky.

Indeed, everything the Slow Man did was slow,
which is how he got his name.

He walked slowly.
He spoke slowly.
He ate slowly.
and in learning,
mercy be upon him,
he was very slow to understand.

As a boy
when the other boys learned Gemara quickly,
during the afternoon seder,
the Rebbe could not even find a chavrusa slow
enough for the Slow Man.
When the other boys were on the 30th or 40th daf,
and some boys were even finishing the mesechta,
the Slow Man was maybe on daf two or three.

"Heaven help him!" the Rebbe thought.
So that the young boy wouldn't despair,
he told him a vort from Rav Chaim:
"When the boys say 'he's such a good learner'
they're making a mistake: what they should
say is: he spends him time learning."

The Slow Man, even as a boy, was not the type
to despair, but the vort from Rav Chaim
made him happy nevertheless.

And as a young man, when his Rabbi asked him
what he had in mind to do with his life,
he was shocked to hear the Slow Man say:
I want to stay in learning,
because try hard as he did,
anyone could see he was the last person in the world
cut out for such a thing.

"If that is his desire, then Heaven will help
him, the Rebbe thought.

The Slow Man did receive help from heaven,
more than you could imagine,
although as far as anyone could tell
he never became any more
cut out for learning.

From beginning to end
in every which way,
he stayed slow as date honey.

But the Slow Man he tried.
And although on the outside he walked slowly
and ate slowly
and spoke slowly,
and certainly learned slowly,
but on the inside he tried and tried
with every single ounce of his entire soul.
So the truth was the Slow Man was, in a way,
extremely fast.
Compared to himself, the Slow Man was not
slow at all.

And it is also true
when the Slow Man did finally
understand something,
he would try and remember it always,
and apply it whenever he had the opportunity.

So slow as he was,
no one could say the Slow Man had a "bad portion,"
like one who understands slowly and
forgets quickly,
although people who saw what a long
time it took him to understand something
thought maybe this could be called a bad portion
anyway.

The Slow Man himself, however,
rarely had even the smallest doubts: He
learned what he could learn
and understood what he could understand
and whatever that was
made him very happy.

On rare occasions
he did have doubts, he would remember
the vort from Rav Chaim
that his Rebbe had told him as a boy:
a man's main praise shouldn't be how he learns,
but that he learns.

At the very end, then,
the Slow Man did not know very much, but
he knew all with his abilities he could have
known.

Measure it anyway you want,
the fact is he knew something,
and after all, what he did know was his,
in this world and in the next.

So, in the morning,
after slowly stretching his arms,
the Slow Man smiled slowly, and then laughed
for today was the last day of the Slow Man's life,
and it is written,
"And you shall laugh on the last day."

"Nu," the Slow Man thought to himself,
"the pasuk says 'And you shall laugh on the
last day.'" So although the slow Man wished
he knew the deeper meaning behind these words, he did
at least know their simple meaning.

So the Slow Man laughed a long, hardy,
joyous laugh that would
make anyone who heard it be filled with joy
themselves.

And the truth is once he started laughing,
the laughter poured right out of him:
the Slow Man laughed all morning,
and through the afternoon and evening,
and except for the moments he was crying
tears of gratefulness and confession,
this is how he left this world.

(C) Adam Marin

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