A Soulful Journey

The Kelmer Maggid came to a city where a modern Talmud Torah had been erected.  The leaders wanted the new school to receive a certain amount of the charity money that belonged to the old school.  A heated argument arose and the Kelmer Maggid was asked to give his opinion.  So he rose and addressed the people in his own inimitable way: “My good friends, I want to tell you a story.  A man arrived at the gates of paradise dressed in modern clothes, with a trimmed beard in the fashion of a Frenchman.  He wanted to enter.  Father Abraham, who stands near the entrance, approached him and asked, ‘Who are you? ‘I am the Vilner Maggid,’ the man explained. Abraham stared the newcomer’s attire and repeated, ‘You are the Vilner Maggid?’  Tell me, in which synagogue did you preach?’ After a few similar questions that man broke down and confessed.  ‘The truth is that I am a former actor of a Vilna theatre....

Thomas Edison was dyslexic, which would have made it difficult for him to succeed in an 1800s classroom.  Research on dyslexia  didn’t begin until the early 1900s, decades after Edison had left public schools, so little was known about it at the time. Thomas Edison’s struggles in school have been well documented over the years, as have his teacher’s view that Edison was “addled.” But the idea that Thomas Edison didn’t know that he’d been called addled is false. The Foundation for Economic Education  reports  that Edison was well aware of his teacher’s diagnosis, and that he was enraged by it: In 1854, Reverend G. B. Engle belittled one of his students, seven-year-old Thomas Alva Edison, as “addled.” This outraged the youngster, and he stormed out of the Port Huron, Michigan school, the first formal school he had ever attended. His mother, Nancy Edison, brought him back the next day to discuss the situation with Reverend Engle...

A youngster brought home a poor report card and was chided by his parents for the low grades.   “ Well, ” he tried, “ all the boys in the class got C ’ s and D ’ s too. ” “ All of them? ” his father asked.   “ How about your friend Charles? ” “ Oh, he got high grades all right, ” the boy conceded.   “ But, you see, he ’ s different.   He ’ s got smart parents. ”