A serious Purim Story

L’chaim!

This is some holiday! Boy, if only Haman knew what kind of holiday he gave us… Anyway, as this wonderful holiday approaches, I would like to share with you a beautiful story to help you ‘warm up’ for this one of kind Yom Tov.

Our story takes us back two years. Location: Milan Italy. Date: Two days after Purim.

Everything was running late, like usual. Purim came and went, and then… oops! We had forgotten to deliver the Mishloach Monos (Purim gifts) to the children who had participated during the past summer in the Chabad day camp.

So we sat down with a map and marked out where we’ll have to visit that evening. All in all, there were about forty houses within four square blocks. The Rabbi, a sworn optimist, gave us his word, that we would need no more than an hour and a half to do the whole job. Not bad.

“Oh, by the way – said the Rabbi – there is one family, the Cohen family, that lives about fifteen minutes out of this area, there’s only a small chance you’ll make it there, but I’ll mark it down anyway, just in case…”

Two of us (a friend by the name of Yisrael and yours truly) gladly volunteered to do the rounds. We set out at eight at night, planning to return to home base ’round nine thirty.

Little did we know what was in store for us… From the second we began the route everything seemed to go wrong. As we trudged from one house (nobody home), to another (she’s sleeping already), to another (non existing address), our spirits plummeted. Murphy’s Law was working over time that evening.

It’s was already ten past nine. We haven’t met even one kid. Our hands we’re hurting from the heavy bags, and to top it all off, we realized that we have gotten lost. Oy vey, why did we jump into this mess?

We stopped our aimless walking, to study the map. Where are we? Hmmm… Ah! I found us! “Yisrael! We have good news and bad news. Bad news first: we’re way out of our 4 square block radius. Good news: we’re five minutes away from the one house that we were not planning on going to!”

We decided to make our way to the way-out house, to try our luck over there. Like our sages said: “when one changes his location, he changes his luck”.

So tired and discouraged we made our way to our destination. Don’t ask me how, but somehow we managed to get lost again, so by the time we reached the right building we were a real sorry/shabby sight.

We rang the bell. And yes! The kids were home! And awake! Oh, how relieved we were. We ran into the building, into the elevator, forgot what floor we were heading to, and got lost… To make a short story long; after walking up and down the stairs we found ‘ours’.

[By now I had lost the strength of cordiality;] I turned the mom and told her how we were knocked out, and would appreciate a cold drink.

She welcomed us warmly into her simple apartment, and gave us drinks and hamantashen (”best in town”), and asked us to share some Torah thoughts. So we did.

Ten minutes later, and we have shared with her and the kids many thoughts/jokes, and she was swallowing it all up asking for more, and I had run out of things to day (could you believe it? That itself was the first miracle of the evening). So I related to her the painful saga of our evening, how “truth to be told we were not planning to come to your house tonight, but for some reason, nothing worked out and we got lost, so…”

Suddenly she burst out crying, or to describe it more accurately, her whole body was shaking as she sobbed. What did I say wrong? Did I offend her? What do I do now?

After a few long minutes of uncontrolled sobs, she told us through the tears her painful story: “just recently my life has taken a turn for the worse, my husband left me, and my children are having a very hard time adjusting to this new life style. To make matters even harder, I have no money to support my children.

“So this morning, I turned to G-d in despair, and asked him to send me a sign, a sign that he remembers me and cares for me.

“So when you shared with me how this was not a planned visit, how this was divine providence. I realized that G-d had answered my prayer, and sent me a sign in the form of two angels, to show me that he cares.

“Thank you G-d for sending me these angels!”

As she continued sobbing for quite a while, I reflected on the last few hours, and understood that it wasn’t Murphy’s Law that was in charge that evening; it was G-d’s Law.

She calmed down, we blessed her (my friend was a Kohen), and said goodbye. We walked out shaken, touched as never before.

Happy purim! Dear fellow angels! Let us all be an angel to a fellow Jew this Purim, and share with him/her the light and happiness of this great day.