Rabbanit Margalit, the wife of the renowned HaRav Ovadia Yosef, zt”l took care of all his needs with utmost devotion. While the Rav was entirely engrossed in his holy world of Torah, his wife and children happily nurtured that by taking care of all the mundane details of running the house.
This included the Rabbi’s garden. The little balcony off the Rav’s house had a little garden. This garden had different spices and plants growing. Every Shabbos when the Rav wanted to say the required hundred brachos, the Rav would go to the balcony and say different brachos on different plants, such as borei minei besamim and borei atzei besamim. From time to time during his learning, the Rav would go again to the balcony and say more brachos.
The Rabbanit always made sure that Rav Ovadia was not missing anything so that he could grow to be the person that he became. The garden was included in her list of responsibilities. When the need arose, she would call a special gardener who would take care of the garden, groom and nip it and make sure it was nice and beautiful so that Rav Ovadia would be able to say his hundred brachos.
After Rabbanit Margalit passed away, nobody called the gardener. After a few weeks, the plants started to wither and die. Rav Ovadia was not able to use the plants on the balcony to say his brachos on besamim. This caused a struggle for the Rav to say the brachos that he wanted to say on Shabbos.
One afternoon, a man arrived at the Rav’s home. Nobody knew who he was, so the Rav was surprised when he said,
“I’m so sorry about your loss.”
“Who are you?” The Rav queried.
“I’m the gardener who takes care of the little garden inside your balcony. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I didn’t know your wife passed away.”
“It’s okay,” the Rav reassured him. “You don’t have to be sorry.”
“No, I didn’t know,” the gardener repeated. “That’s why I haven’t come to take care of your garden all this time.”
Rav Ovadia asked, “How did you find out? What happened?”
He then shared his incredible story, “Last night, the Rabbanit came to me in a dream. She told me, ‘The chacham is suffering because he needs to make his hundred blessings on Shabbat. He needs his garden. Where have you been?’”
“When I woke up, I asked around and I found out that the Rabbanit had passed away. I had no idea. She hadn’t called me to take care of the garden – I’m really sorry.” With that, he approached the balcony and started grooming the garden as before.
This story teaches us several lessons. Firstly, we see the importance of saying a hundred brachos a day. We don’t realize what a powerful holy impactful they have on our neshama.
Secondly, we see that people who pass away know exactly what is happening on this earth, especially what is happening with their family and the things that they cared about.
In addition, we learn that if a person was involved with mitzvos in their lifetime, then even after they pass away, they still get merit from the mitzvos that they were involved in when they were alive. That is a zechus for them, because they were the ones that started it and were involved in it.
So when you start a mitzvah, a charitable organisation or other worthwhile venture, it is a great merit for you because even after 120 years, every time somebody gets involved in that organization or mitzvah that you helped start, you get metrics accrued. You get zechus from that. You get elevated from it because you had a part in it.