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TorahAnytime - The Most Special Shoes! - R. Paysach Krohn - TorahAnytime.com

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Author: TorahAnytime
Categories: Psychology
Tags: psychology
Views: 2 · Last viewed: 2026-10-16 00:55 UTC

Short Summary

Main recommendation: when life feels unfair, pause and consciously focus on the good you still have, using a concrete reminder to say "thank you" to Hashem. R. Paysach Krohn illustrates this "second strategy to be makir tov" (to recognize good) through his Tante Feigel's story of surviving the 2001 Sbarro's pizza shop bombing in Jerusalem and her lifelong ritual with the shoes she was given that day.

Key Points

  • The bombing at Sbarro's on August 9, 2001 killed 15 people and injured over 130; Tante Feigel was there with her daughter when it happened.
  • After the explosion she lost her shoes and could not walk over the glass, so a stranger in a nearby used bookshop helped her; a short man from a shoe store down the block brought her a pair of shoes.
  • A short man brought her the shoes on behalf of a shoe store owner down the block, telling her never to think she had to give them back, that they were hers as a gift.
  • Her ritual: whenever she felt tempted to complain to God, she changed into those shoes, looked down, and said "Thank you, Hashem." She did this for about 20 years.
  • The story is presented as an example of gratitude as a deliberate practice during hardship.

Details Worth Noting

  • Concrete instructions: When you feel like complaining about something Hashem has done, take a physical reminder of gratitude (in her case, the shoes), go to a private place, put it on, look down at it, and say "Thank you, Hashem, I'm alive." Repeat this whenever the urge to complain arises.
  • The shoes still bore the Hebrew letters of the shoe store, which the speaker saw when she showed them to him.
  • Her daughter (the speaker's cousin Gitty) carried her mother across the street after the blast, and she left the scene without her shoes.
  • The speaker states that the story is told in a video by Yelly Gold, and that he heard the full account from his aunt shortly before her death.
  • The speaker frames this as an example of recognizing the good in the world, presented as the second strategy for gratitude.

Bottom Line

Gratitude can be anchored to a specific, meaningful object and a repeated action, turning a painful memory into a daily reminder that survival itself is a reason to thank God.