It all started long ago when they landed on what was then a small mountaintop in Eretz Yisrael inhabited by a handful of pioneering Anglo souls.

As I was also there I know that there was one long winding road flanked by a few Arab villages with amazingly white stones — one lone doctor a van ride away and one van for the entire moshav.

Their first year in Israel they were blessed with “unexpected” twins — and an unexpected sorely felt lack of family — that’s when the people around them became their family.

Family is usually comprised of a group of people we’re born into. In this case as they were born into Eretz Yisrael through their small unsteady steps neighbors became family. In time though they all went their separate ways.

This is why one of these “family members” felt totally comfortable to knock on my friends door at midnight Friday night.

This particular Shabbos my friend Debby tells me was one of those where she almost fell asleep bentsching — or maybe she did — and when she went to put her daughter to sleep she fell asleep first.

She didn’t hear anyone knocking. But her husband who had stayed up to learn heard the knock and opened the door — to find one of these family members standing there with one side of his face all bandaged up.

Right before Shabbos Avi had tripped and hit the side of his head on a concrete.

They hadn’t had enough time to get back to the moshav after being taken care of at the hospital that was near Debby’s house.

Her husband served them a full Shabbos meal and then began to scout a place for them to sleep.

Her son’s room had a band of plugged in electrical cords hanging across one of the beds that on one might have sleep in — so that room was out.

Her husband’s office had a bright light on — that room was out.

The next room was her daughter’s where they were both fast asleep.

Her husband was in a dilemma what to do so he opened their daughter’s bedroom door and softly woke Debby.

“Debby” he whispered “the Fishers are here.”

Debby thought for sure she was dreaming — or her husband was joking.

“Avi fell and hit his head before Shabbos. They couldn’t get back home. They need this room to sleep.”

Well she didn’t tell me exactly what she said but she did say it wasn’t the kind of reaction she would have liked to have had.

Why did I introduced this story with her set of surprise twins?. It’s because they were unexpected and when she came back home from the hospital she walked into her house completely unprepared and almost mowed down by the other crew waiting at home. And what followed is that for at least a year and ten after every time she thought she was finished and she laid her head on the pillow — one woke up.

We call it “Chinese torture” and she suffers sleep deprivation trauma till today. That’s why she’s always in bed at 8:30 at night.

So here she is in the middle of the night faced with one of her greatest fears – being woken up from a deep sleep — until she  come into the dining room and see her sweet friend’s face and just like nightmares go away when you switch on the light so did her fears go away.

“I knew you’d love a mitzvah” Ariella says purely. “And this is a mitzvah d’Oraysa because we really need it. It’s not a social visit.”

They talked until 3 a.m. catching up on details of their lives. Ariella finally went to sleep and then Debby’s nightmare began. She couldn’t fall back to sleep. By five in the morning she was already grouchy and not happy which added to her inability to fall back to sleep.

She tried to buy herself off.

“What if someone offered you $10000 dollars to pace this living room floor and lose this sleep?”

Ten thousand dollars didn’t do it.

She ups the rate.

“What if someone gave you a million?” she ask herself.

That was the sum.

Then she realized ashamedly. Debby Greenbaum if you’re grouchy and kvetchy about losing some sleep you must really not know the value of a mitzvah.”

That hit her like a ton of bricks and then she was able to fall back to a deep comfortable sleep. Maybe she really did get a “million-dollar mitzvah.”