Can you count eight days of miracles?

Sometimes the miracles in our lives are awe-inspiring and momentous, and sometimes they’re manifested as a little extra dose of Heavenly help when needed. Either way, when we look at our own day-to-day existence, we see so many instances where things came together in a way beyond nature and logic.

Three times a day, we thank Hashem for “the miracles You perform for us daily.” When you’re an entertainer in the limelight, sometimes those Divine hugs are more apparent. But if we take stock, we’ll surely see all the Heavenly bounty around us.

Yisroel Lamm

In Sound Condition

The hall was packed, but the mics were silent. We really needed a miracle

It was the wintry morning of one of the early HASC Time for Music concerts. On the way to the full-day, pre-concert rehearsal in Lincoln Center, Sheya Mendlowitz, MBD, and I went in to the Lubavitcher Rebbe to receive his brachah, as we had done every year. When we got back into the car after our stop, Mordechai mentioned that the Rebbe had wished us “brachah v’hatzlachah on the concert,” whereas in previous years he had said “on the rehearsal and the concert.”

It was a little unsettling, but we were not really concerned until we arrived at the hall and discovered that the crew could not get the sound system working — and a working sound system is crucial for rehearsing. The musicians and artists gathered, but the sound system remained down. It was getting late, and we still needed to run through the entire program, so we went ahead and did the best dress rehearsal we could without the sound, hoping the issue would be resolved by showtime.

The engineers were doing their best to get the system going, but when the 7:30 show time arrived, the hall packed with an excited and oblivious audience, and the sound still wasn’t working, we really needed a miracle. It was a producer’s and performer’s nightmare. A few minutes after the scheduled start time, the chief sound engineer, Larry Gates, figured out a work-around. By 7:50 the sound was working. The performers relaxed and the audience settled in to enjoy. And as the Rebbe promised, we had a very successful show.

Levi Falkowitz

Deer in the Headlights

I always like to drive alone. Why did Hashem put the idea of company into my head that night?

When I travel to perform, I like to drive myself, so that I can get ready in my own space. I do whatever I feel I need to in order to get into the zone, or distract myself by listening to a shiur or music.

But just a couple weeks ago, I had a late event on a Motzaei Shabbos and somehow wasn’t in the mood to drive alone. I asked a friend who was going to the same event if he could take me along. It went well, baruch Hashem, and at 4 a.m. we were on our way back on the New York Thruway, nearing home. My friend is an accountant — he’s a very focused and careful driver, even when the roads are totally empty.

Suddenly, a deer walked by, and in the darkness, we hit it. But because it was my friend driving and not me (I can’t guarantee I stay within the speed limit, especially at 4 a.m.), we were only going 65 miles an hour. He pulled over and we realized the car had taken a bit of a beating, but it didn’t look like there was any major damage, so we kept driving. Slowly, though, the car started to fail. First the lights and the speedometer went down, then everything else stopped working. The engine continued to run, and we crawled slowly home.

We cut through the last red light before my block, and we could feel the engine was cutting out. My friend put the car in neutral, and it rolled—to just outside my house, where it came to a complete stop.

If I’d been driving, Hashem knows what would have happened, but He put it into my head to get a ride for once, and He let that car move until it brought me back to my front door.

Leib Yacov Rigler

Impossible Dream

We weren’t so young anymore. Would starting a family elude us?

My wife and I married somewhat later in life, at close to 40 years of age. For musical reference, this was at the time when I had just produced my solo album The Only Road, which Velvel Pasternak thought was ahead of its time and loved, encouraging me to promote it. But I moved to Israel shortly after its release, and we were eager to start a family.

Some months went by after our aliyah, and we began to feel concerned. We consulted a specialist, who agreed to take us on, but the night after our consultation, we went in to the Amshinover Rebbe in Bayit Vegan and told him about our situation.

“You don’t have a problem,” was his response.

We went home and almost immediately found out that our dreams were coming true. It is difficult to describe the elation we experienced. When we went back to our doctor, he said “It’s impossible!”

“It’s a miracle from the Rebbe,” my wife told him. “How else do you explain it?”

He shook his head and said, " I guess this one didn't read the book."

On the due date, our daughter was born, healthy, with no complications for either baby or her 40-year-old, first-time mother. We named her Pliyah Esther, Pliyah meaning “miracle of G-d.”

Pinky Weber

Right Between the Eyes

I was about to deliver the punchline, when I saw something I’ll never forget

I was performing as badchan at a big wedding here in New York. In the middle of the grammen, I used a joke that I had perfected, a whole megillah about teaching someone how to be a shadchan by enhancing all the subject’s good qualities and minimizing the negative ones. I was spinning the tale, and as I sang and acted it out, I suddenly noticed something that almost made me faint. One of the close relatives who was sitting right in front of me had features that matched the punchline of the joke. One of his eyes was much bigger than the other.

I was in mid-flow, headed toward “... one eye was large and the other was small.” It was a neis that I noticed this, and that I didn’t continue and cause embarrassment to this person. I had never, ever, seen someone with eyes like that before. I had to make a U-turn, and quickly find a way out, so I didn’t really finish the joke, but I was pale and shocked from the near-miss. A couple of people asked me afterward what had happened to that particular part of the grammen, but of course I couldn’t tell any of them why I had left off in the middle of the joke. It took a while to recover completely. At the next couple of weddings, I couldn’t bring myself to make any jokes at all.

Isaac Honig

Cancelled

I wanted to help, but what could I do if someone else already grabbed the date?

I had a call one evening from the mother of a chassan, asking if I was available on a certain date.

“I’m not even asking how much you charge,” she said to me. “I can’t afford it anyway. But I promised my son years ago when he was going through a rough time, that if he sits and learns and shteigs and does well, I’ll hire Isaac Honig to sing at his wedding. So I’ll have to manage to come up with whatever you charge.”

I looked up the date. “I am so, so sorry,” I said to this devoted mother, “but I’m already booked that night.”

She was devastated. What would become of her promise to her son? She just couldn’t absorb the blow, and eventually she exclaimed, “I am going to be mispallel that the other family should change the date of their chasunah.”

I was dubious. This was long before the coronavirus era, and the new normal of people changing wedding dates and venues around at the last minute. Wedding dates, once set, did not get changed.

“Don’t worry,” she explained before she hung up, “I’ll daven that they should only move their simchah for a good reason.”

I felt bad for her, but what could I do? A prior booking is a prior booking.

Within 24 hours I had a phone call from the client who had originally booked me to sing on that date.

“We had to change the date of the wedding,” he began.

“I hope you don’t mind me asking, but is it for a good reason?”

“Yes, it is, actually.”

I called the mother back immediately. I had just become available so she could fulfill her promise to her son.

Shlomo Simcha

Beam of Light

If I barely avoided a crash, what about the drivers behind me?

We were about to head out on a family road trip from Montreal to New York one summer. I loaded the trunk with all the cases and packages but was having trouble closing it. Investigating the blockage, I discovered that there was a flashlight sticking out of the trunk. What good is a flashlight in the trunk? I thought. If I have an emergency, it would make more sense to have it nearby. So I put the flashlight in the pocket of the driver’s seat door, strapped in the kids, and we were on our way.

About two hours into the trip, it began to rain heavily, and visibility was poor. As I came around a curve in the road, I could see some large obstruction through the mist, but wasn’t sure what it was until I was really close. It was a truck that had turned over and was now lying on its side. I barely had time to stop and avoid a collision, but somehow, I managed to brake heavily on the wet road and stop the car with less than an inch to spare. I suddenly realized that other cars would be coming around that curve and would not be able to stop in time either, unless I had a way to warn them. This realization, in the dark, with no time to take the children out of the car, was terrifying.

At that moment I remembered the flashlight in the door. I got out myself, grabbed the flashlight and began to wave it around in the direction of the oncoming traffic. The next cars saw me signaling and were able to stop safely without hitting my car or the truck.

A few of the drivers got out, climbed up to the cabin of the truck, and helped the driver out. Eventually, the police arrived and had us all make U-turns and drive back to the previous exit. We used side roads to get to the next ramp and back on the highway to New York.

“V’al nisecha sheb’chol yom imanu” always reminds me of the day Hashem made that trunk door stick, nudged me to put the flashlight in the front, and saved the life of my entire family.

Naftali Schnitzler

Go to Jail

We were invited to Otisville to bring comfort and cheer — maybe that’s why we survived

Around five years ago, I went with Tzali Gold and some other musicians to the Otisville prison facility to visit Reb Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin, Reb Mordechai Samet, and other Jewish inmates. I was invited by Lipa Meisels, a volunteer who works to help frum people in jail and provide for their needs.

It was Chanukah, but it was also a freezing day, with a nasty, ongoing blizzard. We drove up from Williamsburg to Otisville, which is roughly 20 minutes past Monroe. After Monroe, maybe ten minutes before Otisville, things went wrong. We never found out exactly why —was it because of the snow, or maybe the driver lost focus for a second? — but we found ourselves off the road.

The road slopes upward, bordering on a wooded area, and a ditch runs alongside. Still at speed, the car seemed to be flying between the road, the ditch, and the trees, and for those few minutes, there was a real fear of it rolling down the incline.

Suddenly, we bumped into a pole at the roadside. There was one impact, then that was it. We got ourselves out of the car and we realized that baruch Hashem we were completely unharmed, no scratches, no bruising.

We didn’t even have to call 911. The police were there as soon as we got out, because a policeman had been driving by. He put down flares on the road so no other cars should veer off after the accident.

The car was damaged and we couldn’t go any further, but the other volunteers, who had already reached Otisville, turned back to pick us up. When we arrived, the talk was of the miracle which we had just experienced, surely in the merit of being on the way to accomplish a mitzvah. For a Yid in prison, every single small gesture is very meaningful, so it meant even more because of the neis we had on the way to them.

Of course, we played “Al Hanissim.”

Yonatan Razel

Day of Rays

I didn’t give up a minyan, even for a sunrise session at the sea

We were coming to the end of work on an album and it was time for a film and photo shoot. The photographer suggested that we meet at the Dead Sea for a session, but that meant we needed to be there early in the morning, at around 5:30 a.m., to beat the intense heat of the daytime hours.

“What about davening?” I asked him.

“You can daven when you get there,” he suggested.

I was unsure about what to do, so I called my rav, who answered that I could daven alone, although obviously davening with a minyan is always preferred and gives special siyata d’Shmaya. That gave me a push to find a local minyan for Shacharis. I got up in what felt like the middle of the night and drove to Arad, a town not far from the Dead Sea, where I joined the earliest minyan of the local Gerrer chassidim.

When I met up with the photography crew, I was told that they had located the perfect place on their way down from Jerusalem. It was beautiful, a kind of long, narrow peninsula jutting out into the sea. The only problem was that that area of the coast was fenced off and locked. We had no way to access it. As we stood there outside the locked gate, at around 7 a.m., a woman appeared.

Suddenly, she seemed to recognize me and came over. “Yonatan! I remember you. My brother studied in the same class as you at music school.”

Then she waved a key and offered to let us in. Apparently, the lady was a photographer too. One of her projects was laying items such as jewelry and stones under the salt water of the Dead Sea and photographing them as they crystallized. She said that she came back to this spot only occasionally to take pictures, but that day was her day...

We kept encountering “coincidences” that day. Later on, we had arranged to go and film at the house of a friend of mine who lives in the area. When we came in, we saw that a piano had just been delivered. He had bought it that very morning.

The photos taken that day serviced me for years and were always a reminder of a special stream of hashgachah.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 839)