Eshet Chayil – True Majesty

“Strength and majesty are her raiment, she joyfully awaits the last day.”
There is a famous story about my great-uncle, Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer zt”l: He learned that there was an ancient debilitated widow who lived in his neighborhood in Jerusalem. She could not even get up from her bed. People brought food to her everyday, but she had no one to clean up. Rav Isser Zalman paid for a woman to clean the house and the widow every Friday, and would visit her immediately after she was cleaned up.

One day the woman said, “Rebbe, bless me!”

“With what shall I bless you,” he asked.

“With a long life.”

The great sage was shocked, “Do you want to continue living like this for a long time?”

“Rebbe, every Friday, right after the woman cleans me up, I ask her for a glass of water. It is the only time during the week when my body is clean enough for me to recite a blessing. I wait the entire week just to say that blessing. I want to have many years of reciting that once a week blessing.”

Rav Isser Zalman blessed her as she wished. She outlived him.